Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Who’re you, and what d’ you want?’ he spat.

  Stilson wandered past him, hitting him in the mouth with the revolver as he went, and stood at the rear of the room, while the old man snuffled and moaned, holding both hands to his ruined mouth.

  Pulling back the sliding latch on the revolver, Stilson glanced at the chamber. There was the reassuring gleam of brass inside. Six rounds, all unfired. He slammed the chamber shut, and swung around into the first room. The kitchen was so tiny that it would have fitted in a small boat. No one there. He carried on over the hall, kicking the first door. It swung back to crash into the wall revealing a bedroom, with the stench of an old man who cared little for his hygiene. Stilson entered, checked wardrobes, and looked under the bed. All was filled with junk. Every spare space had its own collection of magazines or bags of garbage. Flies buzzed about him. On to the next room – a bathroom – no one there. The last room was a minute bedroom with just enough space for a mattress on the floor. This was where Sumner lived, he guessed. There was a clean shirt on the back of the door, some pants and underwear in neat piles under the window. The window was open. He walked outside, but there was nowhere for Sumner to have run to from here.

  No, he hadn’t been here. He strode back into the house, through to the sitting room, where the old man still rocked in his chair, hands at his mouth. Blood was leaking from between his fingers.

  ‘Old man, I want to know where Roger Sumner is, and I want to know now,’ he said.

  In his pocket were some disposable ear plugs, and he squeezed one until it was thin, and pressed it into his ear. He did the same with his other ear.

  The man looked up at him and took his hands away.

  ‘Go fuck…’

  ‘You ain’t bright, are you?’ Stilson said, and shot his thigh.

  The crash of the .38 in that room was so loud, Stilson was sure he heard a window shatter. The old man’s face blanched instantly, and his body jackknifed, his hands not quite touching his shattered leg, his brow near it. For a moment, whether he had spoken or not, Stilson couldn’t have heard him with his earplugs still in place. He pulled one out and gazed at the man without sympathy – he had none. This old moron had dissed him, and he wasn’t going to get away with that.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  *

  18.46 Las Vegas; 02.46 London

  The Sahara was at the far end of the Strip, away from the Bellagio, and when Jack drove into the car park at the front, he sat looking at it for some while.

  It was not dilapidated, but the whole atmosphere was that of a 1950s building that had been maintained for a price, not for safety and definitely not for looks, like a blowsy whore who spent too much time drunk now her looks were gone. Jack turned off the engine and climbed out. The heat hit him after his journey, and he took a long breath. Some years ago he had spent some months in Nairobi in Kenya, and the heat there was much the same as this: dry and physical. It almost felt like a force of its own.

  He crossed the car park, his eyes about him as he went. Had he known it, Frank Rand was even then standing in a building only four blocks away, arms folded, staring down along the Strip directly at Jack. But Frank couldn’t see his face, and didn’t recognise the clothes.

  Jack entered the neon-lit entrance and stood staring down at the aisles of slot machines. There was a smell of stale sweat and booze, with an overlay of tobacco smoke. He had been told that Sumner would be near the poker tables, so he glanced around, and made his way through the maze of machines, to where the green baize spoke of cards.

  Sumner was not immediately recognisable from the papers. His face was thinner, more haggard, and his complexion was sallow. He had the left sleeve of his sports jacket pinned up, and the scar on his cheek was livid. He had mousy hair which was cut poorly, and it added to the impression of seediness given by the old jacket with leather patches on the elbows, and the slacks. Jack knew without his standing that the backside of those trousers would be polished to a shine from sitting on too many leather barstools and poker chairs.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Jack said, as he approached.

  Sumner looked up and gave Jack a quick study. It was plain that he hoped this was a new player to complement his party. There was no flicker of recognition. There were only the two players at the table, and the dealer nodded to him as he dealt.

  ‘You want in?’ the dealer asked.

  ‘Not yet. I’m here to watch.’

  ‘OK.’

  The game continued, but every so often Sumner glanced at Jack as though wondering what another Brit was doing in this casino. After two games, which Sumner lost, he leaned back.

  ‘Excuse me, but do you want something from me?’

  ‘No, Captain. Not directly.’

  ‘Have we met?’ he frowned.

  ‘In Ireland. Ninety five or six.’

  Sumner peered closer, and there was a spark in his eyes as he realised who Jack was.

  ‘You want to talk?’ he said at last.

  ‘I wanted to ask you a few things about Danny Lewin.’

  ‘Danny? How is he?’

  ‘Not very well,’ Jack said.

  Sumner was nodding to a waitress, who negotiated the chairs and punters with professional calm, the smile never faltering. She bent to give Sumner a good view of her cleavage.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Could you please bring me a large bourbon with ice, please?’

  ‘A bourbon on the rocks, sure, sir. Anything else?’

  Sumner glanced at Jack and said, ‘My round. While you play, they bring you more.’

  ‘Danny’s dead. Shot.’

  Sumner’s face fell.

  ‘Oh, fuck.’

  *

  18.47 Las Vegas; 02.47 London

  Frank was pleased at least that the locals didn’t resent his arrival. When he described the situation and how the two in the Gas Park had been killed, the team were already moving. He had provided them with the mugshot of Jack Case, and now it was being photocopied for the local police.

  ‘We got good relations with the casinos,’ Bert Rankin was saying. He was a large, bluff Chicagoan who had come out to Vegas twenty years ago to avoid the rain and snow, and somehow never made it back. ‘Sure, there’re a couple there we’d like to have inside and question in depth, but gen’rally they’re good. They want to make sure that thieves and cheats get caught more’n we do.’

  ‘Can we ask them for their help in this?’

  ‘We can email the photo and they’ll all get on to it. Believe me, out of all those who’re likely to respond, the casinos are fastest.’

  It was a relief to Frank as he sat and briefed another small team of detectives that the operation here in Vegas seemed so efficient. He ran through his presentation for the fourth time, and it was as he was bringing up the slides of the two men in the car park that a man suddenly sat up and peered.

  ‘When was this taken?’

  ‘Yesterday, at the car park at Gas Works. Why?’

  The man was staring intently.

  ‘That guy there, he reminds me of a trooper I met three, four years ago out in Iraq. I was a Marine then. Only quit four years ago, and took this on instead, but I don’t forget a face, and that guy was out there. Real sonuva bitch, he was.’

  Frank was able to smile regretfully.

  ‘Sorry, don’t think so. We took the man’s prints and details, and nothing came back. No hits.’

  ‘Uhuh. You say. I’ll tell you now, though, he was called Ian McDonnell.’

  Frank glanced at Debbie, who was already writing the name on her legal pad. She shrugged when she saw his face.

  ‘McDonnell, huh?’ Frank said.

  ‘Yeah. He was out there some time, but when all the stories about Abu Ghraib and other prison abuses came up, he was pulled. Heard he was implicated in some of those torture stories they had in the papers. Easy to believe. He was a Christian fanatic, you know? I mean, I go to church and all that, but this guy’s one of them thinks all Arab
s could be shot and the world wouldn’t miss ’em. Had a job with the prisons – guard or something. Another guy told me he was a real bastard. Just believed all Iraqis were US-hating terrorists. Even kids. There were some shitheads out there, but he was one of the worst.’

  ‘But he got pulled, you say?’

  ‘Yeah. I heard he was going to be charged with some of the abuses.’

  ‘Well, like I say, this guy has no ID or anything.’

  ‘Check up McDonnell. That’s him. I’d recognise his face anywhere.’

  Frank asked which unit the man served with, but the officer didn’t know.

  ‘Just check with the staff serving at Abu Ghraib four or five years back. They’ll be able to tell you. There must be records of them.’

  ‘Right,’ Frank said, glancing at Debbie to make sure she had noted the page and details. ‘Any other comments?’

  There was a knock at the door, and a woman officer shoved her head through the door.

  ‘Shooting out at Paradise Valley. Did you say your guy was a Brit?’

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said.

  ‘This is at a place where another Brit lives. Don’t know, but seemed a coincidence to me.’

  *

  18.52 Las Vegas; 02.52 London

  ‘How did Danny die?’ Sumner asked, already halfway down his bourbon, watching the cards as the dealer shuffled and dealt.

  ‘I think someone put a bullet in his head,’ Jack said. ‘He didn’t have too much of a chance.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  Jack shrugged.

  ‘Danny had your name in a book. I found it.’

  ‘Well,’ Sumner said, blowing out a long breath. ‘Poor Danny.’

  ‘What was he like when you knew him?’

  ‘A good lad. But lousy once he realised what was going on. He cared too much.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He was an interrogation officer. And good, too. He managed to get us good intel. But it all got too much for him. His nerves were shot by the time he got back to Blighty. Didn’t like to see that it was all bollocks, basically.’

  ‘What, the war?’

  ‘No, the system. See, the army would send people out to round up the nasties. Off they would go, the poor bloody squaddies, round up all the men from an apartment or house, and bring them back, and we’d sort out the wheat from the chaff. Thanks.’ He picked up his cards and studied them briefly. ‘So he and I would sit in our offices or containers, and question, and question, and question. And since the fellows were brought to us, and the squaddies told us that a known rebel had fingered them, we knew we had to get what they knew from them. And if they sat there looking dumb, we’d do all we could to scare the shit from the bastards. Promise them houris and sherbet if they opened up to us. And if we scared them well and good, they did open up, and they told us their suspicions about neighbours or people a block away, so we’d send the squaddies off to that address, and some other intel officer would have them to question.’

  He studied his cards, winced, said, ‘Fold,’ and turned to face Jack. ‘But we never bloody knew. That was the trouble. We never bloody knew whether they were just throwing us a line to get us off their backs. And usually that’s what it was. We all went through it. After a while, Danny snapped. He had a young lad in, probably only fifteen or so, and he broke the little sod. Poor bastard.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He had had enough. The work was relentless, and he had this little sod who just kept denying all knowledge, and Danny broke. He punched this kid, three or four times, and then he realised what he was doing and stopped. And he couldn’t carry on after that. You see, Danny was a good fellow, really. All he wanted to do was open things up and save lives. Instead he was there with the rest of us in that dirty little war. I got back and kept my mouth shut, so my brag rags grew, but Danny wouldn’t play the game.’

  ‘I know. I debriefed him.’

  ‘Well, you know what he was like, then. He was always going to die young.’

  ‘There are always some like that,’ Jack observed.

  ‘Yes,’ Sumner said with a dry smile as he toasted Jack and drained his drink.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m having a high old time of it, I am. I’ll carry on enjoying the high life here until I run out of steam.’

  ‘Couldn’t you go home, start up the charity again, or some other business?’

  Sumner looked at him with a patronizing smile.

  ‘Do you think they’d let me try?’

  And then he shocked Jack by weeping.

  *

  19.04 Las Vegas; 03.04 London

  Frank and Debbie followed two detectives from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police department. They hurtled along the Strip, then off, and soon Frank was confused. The car in front was rocketing from one block to another, and the suspension was bucketing as they hit potholes, and the cheap blacktop was rumbling through the shocks until Frank felt like the fillings in his teeth were coming loose. He was relieved when the cops in front pulled up in a trailer park out near the fringes of the city, and he could switch off the engine and climb out.

  There was a crime scene officer with a notepad and pen, who took Frank and Debbie’s names and badge numbers before letting them anywhere near the bodies.

  As they ducked under the tape, already wearing the latex gloves they’d been given, Debbie complained, ‘It’s never like this on TV. There the guys just walk straight on in.’

  ‘That’s because it’s TV,’ Frank said. ‘I heard a British pathologist once, said he’d been asked to look at a script and gave up when the actor suddenly said he was going to X-ray some blood.’

  ‘Why’d he say that?’

  ‘Because,’ Frank said laconically, ‘he was an actor. They have to say something. It’s why the TV is full of such bullshit.’

  They reached the inner perimeter. Beyond this most officers couldn’t go, for fear of polluting any evidence, but the FBI agents had authority today. Their DNA and prints would be on file to be cross-referenced against anything found on or near the bodies.

  There was a small bungalow, with a car parked out front. Frank could see that the trunk had been popped, and inside were two bodies, a man and a woman. He walked to them and stared down.

  It was a long time since he’d been upset at the sight of a dead man, but there was a residual pang each time he saw one – always worse with the women, too. This one was young, a brunette, with a slim figure. Once she had been attractive, but the bullet through her right eye had spoiled her looks.

  The man was if anything worse. The bullet had entered through the back of his head, and the shockwave of the bullet passing through the water of his brain had made his features swell alarmingly. They were already blackened, but in this heat that was no surprise.

  ‘Whose car is it?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Best guess is, it’s that guy in the trunk,’ a homicide detective told him. ‘It’s registered to a Mister Crosbie. Looks like someone took a dislike to Mister Crosbie and his girl. Shot them both, stuffed them into the trunk, and then went into this guy’s house and blew his head off.’

  ‘And? Could the old man in the house have killed these two?’

  ‘It don’t look good for that. For one thing the old guy has a bullet in his knee. From a big calibre. Then there’s a .357 revolver in the trunk with these two, so maybe Crosbie here could have shot the old man with that; but that means somehow the old man shot Crosbie and this girl, picked them up and threw them into the trunk, then walked back to his house and killed himself. Don’t reckon to that.’

  ‘Bullets?’

  ‘Don’t know, but the entry wounds on these two are pretty small, as is the head shot on the old man. You can see for yourself that there’s no exit.’

  ‘What about the old man.’

  ‘Be my guest. But his leg’s bad.’

  Frank and Debbie walked to the bungalow and nodded to the officer at the door. There wa
s no need to enter. The flies and the smell of blood were repulsive already.

  ‘See what I mean about the leg,’ the detective said. He shook his head. ‘The old man copped a slug in here, I’d say. Bullet was through and through, taking most of his thighbone with it. He’d have died soon from that anyhow.’

  ‘So you don’t believe the story.’

  ‘No. I think another guy shot the two in the trunk, put them inside and drove here with them. Once here, he shot the old man for some reason, and then blew his head off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You tell me. But there were some kids down the road said a big man in a suit was here. They called us because they heard shots. He came here in that car, alone, and then walked in here.’

  ‘What about afterwards?’

  ‘Kids saw him walk out and back towards downtown,’ the officer said, jerking his thumb to point.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Yeah. Like they’d have asked,’ the detective grinned.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘There was a gun in here. A small .357 – two inch barrel, blued, all normal. Except it’s got no maker numbers on it. Serial or anything.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yeah. He was a pro all right.’

  Frank nodded.

  ‘OK. Thanks for this.’

  He walked out to the car and glanced in at the trunk again.

  Debbie joined him. ‘You reckon this was your guy?’

  ‘Where’d he get a gun that fast? No, I think this was done by someone else. But…’

  He had seen a small group of teens watching. One was on a pushbike, while the others loitered. One appeared to be in some pain, but none made any move to leave when Frank walked over to them.

  ‘Hi.’

  There was no answering welcome.

  Frank jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘You knew this guy?’

  ‘It was old Jonah. We all knew him.’

  ‘That was his name, right?’

  The boy with the sullen expression nodded. His voice was rough when he said, ‘How’d we know? That’s what everyone called him. Jonah Lewis.’

  ‘Did you see the guy come here who killed Jonah?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you deny it you’ll be arrested and spend the next week in gaol,’ Frank said, as he showed his FBI badge.