Dap Deals With Death
Copyright© 2026 Drew Bourrut
Chapter 5: The Bronx Connection
The Bronx was a graveyard of ambition, a sprawl of rusted iron and shattered glass that smelled of coal smoke and wet misery. Dap moved through the warehouse district with the practiced ease of a man who spent more time in the shadows than under a streetlamp. Maya stayed close, her footsteps light against the grit of the alleyway, her eyes wide as she scanned the hulking, windowless structures that blocked out the pale moonlight.
“Stay behind me,” Dap said, his voice a low rasp. He kept his hand near his coat pocket, feeling the cold, reassuring weight of his revolver. “This place has the look of a trap, and I never did like the way the rats run in the Bronx.”
They reached the address scribbled in the ledger. It was a skeletal frame of a building, a former shipping hub that had long ago given up on commerce. The sign hanging by a single, groaning hinge read: Bronx Logistics Solutions. It was a grand name for a place that looked like it hadn’t moved a crate since the Great War.
Dap gave the door a shove. It groaned, protest echoing through the cavernous space before it swung wide. The interior was a tomb. Stagnant air greeted them, heavy with the scent of ozone and stale tobacco. He clicked on his flashlight, the beam cutting a sharp, yellow path through the swirling dust motes.
The warehouse floor was a maze of empty wooden pallets and discarded twine. They walked toward the back, where a small, glass-walled office stood like a lonely sentry. The glass was spiderwebbed with cracks, and the door hung open at an unnatural angle.
Dap stepped inside, his boots crunching on broken glass and splintered wood. It was a disaster. Filing cabinets had been tipped over, their contents spilled out like the entrails of a gutted fish. Desk drawers were pulled out and discarded, papers fluttering like dead birds in the draft. Whoever had been here before them hadn’t been looking for money; they had been hunting for something specific, something that could burn the whole city down.
“Look at this,” Maya whispered, pointing toward the desk.
Dap knelt, his flashlight illuminating a ledger that lay open on the floor. It was a twin to the one he had found in the diner, but this one had been slashed with a knife, the pages torn from the binding. Whoever had ransacked this place had been in a hurry, yet they had been thorough.
“They were looking for the same thing we are,” Dap said, standing up. He felt a prickle on the back of his neck, the distinct sensation of eyes watching from the darkness beyond the office walls. “This isn’t just about a missing mother anymore, Maya. This is about a ledger that carries enough weight to sink a fleet of ships.”
He poked through the debris with his toe. A discarded inkwell had been smashed, staining the floor in a dark, jagged puddle. He crouched to examine a scrap of paper that had been wedged behind a radiator. It was a shipping manifest, dated only two days ago. The destination was redacted, but the weight of the shipment was circled in red ink. It was too heavy for a simple grocery delivery, and too light for industrial machinery.
“They aren’t just moving goods,” Dap muttered. He looked at Maya, who stood by the door, her face a mask of pale determination. “They’re moving secrets. And they don’t want anyone to know the contents of the cargo.”
He stepped out of the office and walked toward the center of the warehouse. He kicked a stack of crates, expecting them to be empty, but they thudded with a solid, metallic ring. He pulled a pry bar from his belt and wedged it under the lid of the nearest crate. With a sharp crack of wood, the top gave way.
Inside, nestled in straw, were rows of precision-machined parts wrapped in thick, greased paper. They weren’t weapons, and they weren’t contraband liquor. They were components for something else, something high-tech that had no business being in a rundown warehouse in the Bronx.
“Dap,” Maya called out, her voice trembling. “There’s a car idling out front. I saw the headlights flick off.”
Dap didn’t hesitate. He pulled his hat low and extinguished his flashlight. The darkness in the warehouse became absolute, a thick, suffocating blanket. He could hear the soft, rhythmic tapping of boots on the concrete floor outside. They weren’t trying to be quiet anymore; they were making their presence known, a calling card from the shadow organization that had been trailing them since the diner.
“They’re not here to talk,” Dap said, his voice a whisper that barely traveled across the room. He moved toward the wall, his eyes adjusting to the slivers of moonlight filtering through the high, grimy windows. “Get behind the loading bay, Maya. Don’t move until I tell you.”
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