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  GATES OF POWER

  PETER O’MAHONEY

  GATES OF POWER

  A Jack Valentine Thriller

  Peter O’Mahoney

  Copyright © 2019

  Published by Roam Free Publishing.

  1st edition.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Belu.

  https://belu.design

  GATES OF POWER

  A JACK VALENTINE THRILLER

  BOOK 1

  PETER O’MAHONEY

  Chapter 1

  A scream more animal than human echoes through the narrow corridor. I run towards it, my mouth dry and chest heaving like a bellows.

  Two gunshots.

  The acrid smell of propellant fills the already suffocating air.

  The screaming continues.

  I power forward as paintings on the wall whizz past me in a blur: smiling faces with stick arms and giant fingers; rainbows, cotton clouds and big round lollipop suns; smiling parents and siblings. Happiness. Joy. Innocence. But it’s pain that permeates the place today.

  Unimaginable pain.

  I round the corner and hell stretches before me. Small, fragile bodies lay strewn around a classroom. Hideous wounds. Blood smeared around like paint. The slaughter of the innocent. My eyes dart about, searching frantically.

  And there she is: Claire; my Claire.

  Choking. Gasping. Nearly breathless.

  Dying on the floor, clutching the lifeless body of a little boy as if he were her own son, the child we could never have. A wail erupts from the depths of her soul as she stares into my eyes, begging me for help, to take it all away, to wake her from this horrific nightmare.

  Only it is me who wakes, screaming into the night, and guilt floods over me like the full, cold weight of the ocean.

  Three years had passed since Claire’s murder, since my heart was shattered into a thousand pieces with no way to put it back together. I’d locked it away securely but it haunted me at night, when my defenses were down. And the dream would recur.

  He killed himself, of course. They always do. Robbing me of retribution and leaving a gaping Claire-shaped hole in my life that nothing could ever fill. I’d tried the bottle, prescription drugs, women; hell, I’d even tried the church, briefly. The only thing that quietened my demons was my work as a private investigator.

  And so, I threw myself into it.

  It’s what you do: you continue, you keep fighting, keep trying to move forward, keep trying to honor their memory.

  And a new case had just arrived, and it was one of my favorites: a murder investigation.

  *****

  This was not like Claire’s funeral, more like a circus, and yet it still brought it all back.

  Some people who knew Brian Gates turned up looking sincere, some were there to support loved ones, but the majority were there out of obligation. It was the public, those who only knew his television persona, that looked the most bereaved.

  Still, that’s not to say there was a shortage of women there to emotionally unburden themselves on the makeshift stage, highlighting their own ‘special connection’ with the deceased, each staking a claim to the top-spot in his affections: that it was her, and her alone, who really understood him, as he did her.

  Truth was, he probably wouldn’t remember any of their names.

  As memorials go it was grandiose: Chicago’s Cultural Center with its huge pillars and high domed ceiling, decked out with more flowers than a florists’ convention—a perfect send-off for the famous or the infamous, and Brian Gates was both in equal measure. High above the stage hung a giant version of his cheesy publicity photo. There he was all fake tan and porcelain pearly whites, sitting on his famous TV studio desk, pointing a long index finger at the camera, thumb up, while winking and flashing that trademark toothy Cheshire cat grin.

  A well-built African American man, television producer Pat Packman, addressed the crowd, strutting back and forth across the stage. Microphone in hand, he was throwing his own brand of contrived smiles at those gathered below in a poor imitation of the man he eulogized. He looked like he loved being in front of the camera, but he lacked the charisma to work the crowd and his delivery was flat.

  “He commented on politics daily but he was the most politically incorrect man I knew. And I say that as a compliment!”

  Polite smiles were flashed from the public gallery.

  “When my Netflix special on Brian Gates aired last June, it polarized people’s opinions more than any other program I’ve produced. I think it’s fair to say that women in particular were divided. Sure, there were those who considered him a chauvinist, a TV throwback to another era, but even his staunchest detractors would have to admit to Brian’s undeniable charm. My favorite response to the program was from a woman who told me: ‘If I’d have met Brian Gates, I may well have had an affair with the man, because he was self-confident and funny, but I would have hated myself for it in the morning.’ As you know, this was far from a unique reaction.”

  The crowd laughed at this one, while a few of the celebrities smiled uncomfortably.

  Everyone knew what he was referring to. When hosting a TV debate on gender rights and freedom of speech, Gates had drawn the anger of a leading feminist academic after repeatedly referring to her throughout the program as “Hun,” and “Sweetie” before closing his argument with, “Sweetie, if I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong!” She hit the roof, but Gates played it cool. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you...” he replied with mock sincerity, “but it’s still on the list of possibilities,” he added, miming slapping her ass. There was an uproar in the studio, but a week later it came out in the press that after the show he’d worked his legendary charm, had taken her for a drink to smooth things over, and had ended up bedding her. After that her career was in tatters, but Brian Gates became a legend.

  The Netflix special had introduced Gates to a whole new generation. A generation raised on rampant political correctness, but who, none-the-less, took him to heart, and soon referred to him affectionately as “The Gates.” For many he became the refreshing antidote to the “snowflake social-justice-warriors” with their recreational outrage at the slightest political indiscretion. He became retro cool in that one-liner 70s male chauvinist pig sort of way and became the most unlikely of internet stars when a compilation of his greatest quips went super viral.

  You know, like:

  “Bigamy, the practice of marrying two wives, should be defined as having one wife too many. Monogamy should be described as the same.”

  “Taking a woman home involves math skills—you have to add the bed, subtract the clothes, and pray that you don’t multiply.”

  Some, it’s got to be said, were better than others. When reading a story about a baker with a gun, he concluded the piece with the now immortal words, “Go ahead. Bake my day.”

  That little nugget helped him land a gig as a judge on a panel for a series of bakery shows, until, that is, it came out that ‘The Gates’ had slept with two of the other three panelists: the famous celebrity chefs⁠—and sisters⁠—Anna and Clare McMann.

  Yeah, Brian Gates was a character, alright.

  His viral fame was somewhat ironic, he often got riled up about the malign influence of the internet, how it was making the youth of America fat and lazy with their virtual friends and virtual passions, playing virtual sports and living virtual lives.

  But his real pet peeve were the gamers. And it was the biggest of them all who had
been charged with his murder: Gaming superstar and poster boy, Alfie Rose.

  I admit, it was an alien world to me—that people would pay good money to watch someone play ‘shoot-'em-up’ video games. But its popularity was undeniable, and Alfie Rose was huge. With millions of followers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you name it, he was an all-around social media mega star with the looks to match. And by all accounts likable too. Sort of a modern rock star, a guy that young girls want to follow, and the boys want to be.

  The bad blood between Rose and Gates started after Gates referred to Rose as a ‘Mommy’s basement loser boy’ live on air. That was the spark that lit the fire. Soon they were trading regular insults on their respective platforms, and their devotees took it real serious.

  I’d taken the call from Alfie Rose myself.

  His trial began in two weeks and he was staring down a stretch inside of twenty plus years. Sure, his lawyers had hired private investigators, but he didn’t trust them—his attorneys or the PIs—they’d been encouraging him to take a deal for 10 years. Floating the idea with a little too much enthusiasm, pushing him to take the plea, like they thought he’d done it. He was pleading not guilty, and wanted to prove as much, but it was too late now to jump ship and hire a new team, and, to be fair, the case against him was strong.

  That’s when my name came up. As it often does. I don’t advertise but I’m never short of work.

  If people want the best, then they know who to hire: Jack Valentine.

  By now the man on stage was warmed up.

  “I guess it’s no secret that producers don’t always like the stars they work with, but it would be hard not to like Brian Gates, he was an exceptional man. He was certainly not like the new generation of newscasters, with their clean-cut ways and phony outrages, politely tip-toeing around an issue so as not to offend. Not Brian, he liked to state the case for something in the most extreme terms with real conviction and belief. He was the last of a dying breed, and with his passing, the news reading world is a lot less fun, and I for one lament that, as I do the passing of a friend.”

  Packman wrapped up proceedings soon after, hitting “play” on a video of Gates’ famous viral one-liners, which sprang to life on a screen behind the stage.

  Before the applause subsided, I slipped outside.

  If I had hoped to go unnoticed it wasn’t meant to be. As I stood watching people leaving a familiar face approached: Hugh Guthrie, one of Brian’s rival newscasters.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Super Sleuth himself. Nice suit. Italian made?”

  “I own a lot of nice suits, but I only bring this one out for funerals. I’ll even wear it to yours; which will hopefully be sometime soon.” I pulled at the collar of my shirt, loosening the tie that was trying to strangle me. “Good to see you’ve put partisan issues aside to be here, Hugh.”

  “You know what it’s like with family events, you might not wanna go but you gotta go. If not, your absence is noted. And us newscasters are family.”

  “Touching, Hugh. Real touching.”

  Our paths had crossed many times before, most recently when Hugh hired me to dig up dirt on a rival to secure a job. Messy business, but he got the result he wanted. Did I like him? No, but that wasn’t a prerequisite to me taking a case.

  “I’d like to know what you do in the gym, Valentine. Your arms look thicker than my torso.”

  “You could pray for better genetics.” I stepped towards him, engulfing him under my shadow. “Because nothing else is going to help you.”

  Truth was, I didn’t work that hard in the gym. I had been blessed with the genetic lottery: I towered over most people, still had a full head of hair at forty, and every time I looked at the gym, my muscles seemed to grow.

  “A little birdy told me you were looking into Gates’ murder, Jack. I heard that the gamer gave you a call himself. Do you think he did it?” Always the reporter, Guthrie pushed for information.

  “This is a funeral, Hugh. You should have left your reporter hat at home.”

  “I think a lot of people had a motive to kill the man. He made a lot of people angry along the way and pushed the buttons of powerful people. Sure, he had fans, people who idealized his persona, but behind closed doors, the guy was a walking time-bomb; no-one knew when the next scandal was going to break, all everyone knew was that there would always be one more.”

  “He left a trail of spurned lovers and angry husbands in his wake. No offense, Hugh.”

  “That’s a long time ago. You know we patched up our differences, right?”

  I didn’t respond, as the person in question was already on her way over: Lizzie Guthrie, far younger than Hugh and a delicate woman—not delicate like a flower, delicate like an unexploded bomb.

  “What a load of guff!” she spat out with the tenderness of a woman scorned. “I know it’s not the right thing to speak ill of the dead, but that doesn’t mean you have to practically canonize them. A good friend of his? Puh-lease! Everybody knew Packman couldn’t stand him.”

  “The producer?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Pat Packman. Hated Gates but made him very rich.”

  “Why’d he hate him?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual with Gates.” Lizzie’s comment was flippant. “Packman’s wife left him to be Gates’ fourth.”

  “Still, they had an eminently successful working relationship,” added Hugh. “And Packman couldn’t ignore that. After all, it’s called show business, not show friendship. Never underestimate the supreme power of the almighty buck.”

  “He had to pander to Gates’ needs, mind you. There was only one star of that show and he expected to be treated accordingly. It must have driven Packman crazy, it would me,” added Lizzie. “How could you work with the man that stole your wife?”

  Hugh’s face creased ever so slightly, and I caught a glimpse of the pain that still sat with him. It’s all good and well to say that the past is the past, that all has been forgiven, but even someone as heartless as Hugh must’ve felt some residual pain after Lizzie cheated on him with none other than “the Gates” himself.

  A stream of people started departing the hall, mainly Joe Public, but then a familiar face emerged.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Hugh.

  Striding with purpose was Pat Packman. Several paces behind but moving with the same urgency was a pale skinned woman with curly auburn hair, attractive but clearly agitated. I recognized her from the preliminary background checks I’d run on Gates: Kelly Holmes, the second wife.

  A former model, she had married Brian when she was twenty-one and he was forty. She was forty-one herself now and had carved out a career as an actress on a daytime soap opera. Not the big time, but it was as far as she was going to climb.

  “If anyone’s got a motive it’s her,” quipped Lizzie. “The way he treated her. And all aired in public. Total humiliation. Rumor has it his girlfriend turned up on their honeymoon and when she protested, he told her, ‘Darling, you should be more like the French. French men have girlfriends and mistresses, why can’t you be like them?’ By all accounts she was, for a while. But you can’t put up with that forever, unless you’re a doormat, and she proved otherwise. Good settlement in the end. Must have sweetened the pill. Especially given Gates was such a miser.”

  “So, what do you think, Valentine? Could one of them have done it?” asked Hugh. “Come on, Valentine, who do you think the guilty party is? The gamer or one of them?”

  He made it sound like he was joking, like he wasn’t really digging for information, but I could read him like a book, and it wasn’t a good one. They could dig all they wanted; they weren’t getting anything from me I didn’t want them to get.

  It was going to be a difficult investigation with all the media attention, and people like Guthrie weren’t going to make it easy for me. They were in a feeding frenzy, hungry for more, and I didn’t intend to supply them with cheap food.

  But there was one thing I knew, one thing that was clear fr
om the moment Alfie Rose called me: I was stepping into a dangerous world, and death was going to follow me.

  Chapter 2

  Jagged shards of glass explode from the window, showering the couch and carpet, shattering the midnight serenity in an instant. It’s dark, barely enough light to see, but suddenly light is everywhere. Blinding light, as flames engulf the living room.

  Fire sprints up the curtains, devouring their fabric in a heartbeat as they collapse to the floor limp and consumed; next goes the couch, thick, dark clouds billowing violently from its core as the inferno spreads at terrifying speed. In the corner of the room a dog awakes, panicked, running back and forth with no way to escape.

  Suddenly, a figure appears, difficult to see amid the turmoil, holding something, there’s another cloud, this time white as carbon dioxide fills the air, choking out the blaze, and mercifully the flames subside. The dog leaps into the figure’s arms and as the smoke clears his face becomes apparent: Alfie Rose.

  I clicked “stop” on the first of two video surveillance files that had landed in my inbox overnight.

  The other one was less dramatic: an exterior view of Alfie Rose’s house with the two arsonists sprinting away towards a getaway vehicle.

  The attack was over a week ago, and I guess in part, it prompted Rose’s call to my office.

  I took a long sip of coffee—double strength and black—and tried to focus. This was proving difficult as I could sense a presence in the corner of the room. You know, that feeling like you’re being watched? That’s how it felt. I glanced towards it for the umpteenth time: the pack of cigarettes on the table. Was I looking at it or was it looking at me? It sure felt like the latter. I’d been resisting all morning, badly. Claire had always badgered me to quit, but temptation was wearing me down.

  “Oh, hell!” I cracked, headed over to the pack and lit one up, inhaling deeply.