by Michael Kerr
Sammy knew in an instant. He should have known just by the size of the man. This was the big guy who’d broken Roy’s jaw and shot his toes off.
Logan saw the realization in Sammy’s eyes. “There you go, it was easy to work out, wasn’t it?” he said. “I’m here for information and a little retribution, Sammy. The longer it takes me to get answers, the more I hurt you.”
Sammy swallowed hard. He knew that he was in a precarious position, and that he was no match for the man sitting so casually in a chair just a few feet from him.
“Can I get up,” he asked.
“Not yet,” Logan answered. “How’s Roy?”
“Roy who?”
Logan’s arm was a blur. A stream of hot coffee left the mug and hit Sammy in the face, burning his eyes before his brain could receive the message to close them. He whooped as he fell back and brought his hands up, as if he could wipe away the discomfort.
“I don’t know how hard you want to make this, Sammy,” Logan said, getting up to go and pour himself more coffee. “What you really need to understand is that you’re going to tell me everything I want to know before I leave here. I’m not a cop, so don’t worry about saying anything that will incriminate you. Just concentrate on saving your worthless skin.”
“I’m just a fuckin’ messenger,” Sammy wailed, finding it hard to see anything but hazy shapes through his scalded eyes.
Logan drank the coffee and said nothing for a few minutes. Silence was a powerful tool. “You’re more than a messenger,” he said. “Tell me all about the piece of shit you connect the likes of Naylor and Mendez to.”
“A guy by the name of Brandon.”
Logan nodded. “That would be Jerry, the car dealer, right?”
Sammy nodded.
“Who ran Richard Jennings down?”
“Sal Mendez.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Logan drained his mug and threw it at Sammy’s head. It struck him in the middle of the forehead and broke in half. Sammy fell back dazed.
“Not the right answer,” Logan said. “Try again.”
Sammy put the palm of his hand across his brow and could actually feel a lump forming where it had been hit.
“Jennings was trying to rip Brandon off,” he said. “But I don’t know the details, and that’s the God’s honest truth. My boss doesn’t tell me his business.”
“So good old Jerry solves his problems by having people killed, right?”
“As far as I know this was the first time.”
“Why did he think that you could arrange it?”
“He knows I did time. Asked me if I’d take care of Jennings for him. I said no, but told him that I knew a couple of guys that would.”
“I’ll buy that. So Richard Jennings was whacked. Why the decision to go after the wife and daughter?”
“Because Brandon is fuckin’ paranoid. He reckoned that Jennings would have kept records, and that he might have passed them to one of them.”
“Would’ve been better if he’d braced Jennings and got the facts before he put the contract out.”
Sammy shrugged.
Logan went to the kitchen again and picked up a notepad and pen that he’d seen on a counter, under a wall-mounted phone. Went back and asked Sammy for Brandon’s work and home addresses and wrote them down. “What’s the current state of play, Sammy?” he said. “Has Brandon told you to call Mendez off? Or is the contract still live?”
Sammy thought about lying but decided against it. “He still wants the job done. Sal is up in the mountains somewhere, looking for the women.”
“I think we’re done here,” Logan said to Sammy as he pocketed the pad and pen. “I’ve got your wallet and cell, and if I need to find you again I will, and then I’ll kill you.”
Sammy made his move. Physically he was no match for this tall, broad guy that had appeared from nowhere. But he was fast. He sprung to his feet and darted for the bedroom door, ignoring the burning pain from his knee. Without hesitation he ran around the bed to pull open the top draw of the nightstand.
Logan appeared at the door and leaned against the jamb.
“You looking for this?” he asked Sammy, pulling the Glock from his pocket and aiming it at Sammy’s heart.
Sammy just sat down on the bed. He waited for the bullet and hoped that death would be as quick and painless as he’d made it for Roy.
Logan walked around the bed to within an arm’s length of the now cowering young man and pistol-whipped him across the head, twice.
Before he left the apartment, Logan bound Sammy’s wrists and ankles together with duct tape he found in a kitchen unit drawer that was full of small hand tools. He then wiped the gun with paper towels and pressed it into Sammy’s right hand, making sure that the inside of his index finger came into contact with the trigger. He left the Glock on a counter in the kitchen next to a plastic bag full of coke that he’d found hanging from a piece of wire in the toilet cistern. He also wiped the few surfaces and objects he’d touched, including the two halves of the broken mug.
He waited till he was out on the street before phoning the police to give Sammy’s address, and to inform them that there was a guy with a loaded gun and drugs there.
As far as Logan could work out there were only two problems left to take care of. One was Jerry Brandon, and the other was Sal Mendez.
Maybe this would all be resolved in the very near future. As always, time would tell.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sal parked on the grass verge and walked back fifty yards to the entrance to Mountain Dew Lodges. The stone chip drive led to a single-storey office and shop combo. He went inside and to the right where a woman he pegged at being in her early sixties with scraped back gray hair was sitting on a stool behind a wood counter with carvings of squirrels, raccoons and other critters on the front. There was a tall carousel with postcards in the slots next to the cash register. And a fan on the counter was whirring as it turned back and forth through 180°. Sal’s eyes were drawn to a long, loose wisp of the woman’s hair that drifted in the breeze the fan generated.
“Help you, sir?” Amy Carson asked Sal.
“Hope so,” Sal replied. “I want to surprise my sister. I believe she’s stayin’ here with her hubby and my niece. They would’ve arrived sometime yesterday.”
“Name?” Amy asked, opening the guest register that was out of sight at the left side of the cash register.
“Jennings,” Sal said. “Rita Jennings.”
“Sorry,” Amy said. “There’s no one of that name here.”
Sal gave her a puzzled look. “Rita’s slim with dark hair, and my brother-in-law is hard to miss, he’s about six-three and fit looking. They’re drivin’ a dark-blue Discovery.”
“Definitely not here, friend,” Amy said. “You’ve got the wrong place. Maybe they’re staying at the Mountaintop Hotel and you’ve got the name mixed up.”
“Maybe your right,” Sal said. “Whereabouts is it?”
“Three miles east of here, you can’t miss it.”
Sal thanked her and walked back out to the highway. He was enjoying the hunt. Kept running different scenarios through his mind as he drove up the serpentine road towards the next place his marks might be at. Maybe he would take out the big guy first, to eliminate him as a potential threat. He had proved that he was dangerous, and Sal wasn’t in the habit of taking unnecessary risks. Roy had always been careful in the past, but had been no match for the stranger who’d appeared from nowhere to protect the woman. And he had Roy’s gun now, so would have to be capped on sight. It also occurred to Sal that he hadn’t got laid for a few weeks. Maybe it would work out that he would have the time to enjoy himself with the bitches before he double-tapped them both and let Sammy know that the job was done.
To Sal Mendez, killing for money was a vocation. Not many people got paid so well for work that they loved doing. He had been in the army, and lucky enough to see action and be able to
whack total strangers in faraway lands with the blessing of his great country’s government. They’d trained him to kill, and it was something that he’d got a taste for and was exceptionally good at.
A few minutes later he saw the sign for Bear Country Cabins. Drove in and parked at the right side of the narrow dirt road. Low branches from towering pines scraped against the bodywork of the Taurus. He climbed out and strolled round a curve to where he could see some of the cabins nestled in front of a lake; each separated from the other by plenty of distance and thick foliage to give the guests an even greater sense of privacy.
The first cabin he came to had been constructed with a large plate-glass window either side of a door that had a sign stating ‘Welcome to Bear Country Cabins’ hanging on the inside of it.
A traditional bell-on-a spring attached to the door rang to alert entry as Sal went in the office. The reception counter was to the right and was bright and cheerful, with no kitsch carvings, just a few posters on the wall depicting mountain scenes, waterfalls and sunsets over lakes and forest. To the left was an archway leading into a small store that sold basic groceries at inflated prices.
“Hi, friend,” a tall, pencil-thin guy with a full dark beard that looked in need of a comb said as he appeared through a door at the rear.
“Hi back at ya,” Sal said.
“I’m Norman Benton, the head cook and bottle washer around here. How can I help you?”
“I’m lookin’ for a friend, Norm’, Sal said. “He’s as big as a tree and drives a dark-blue Discovery.”
“That’ll be Mr Logan in cabin three,” Norman said.
“That’s him,” Sal said. “I aim on surprisin’ him.”
“Not at the moment, friend. I’m an early riser. Saw him drive off just after daybreak, and he hasn’t come back yet.”
“What about his wife and daughter?” Sal asked. “They go with him?”
Norman shook his head. “He was on his ownsome.”
Sal had choices. He could wait for the man calling himself Logan to return, or go to the cabin and take care of the women. And Norm now figured in the equation. Left alive, he could give police a good description of him. Sal knew that the most risk was at the POK, which was his own acronym for Point of Kill.
Looking casually out through the window and then at a plan on the wall that showed the layout of the cabins, Sal checked that there was no one in sight before drawing his pistol, chambering a round and pointing it at Norman.
“Here’s the deal,” Sal said to the now open-mouthed proprietor. “I leave you tied up in the back and go about my business, or shoot you where you stand. Which is it to be?”
“Being tied up seems the way to go,” Norman said. “But the only money I’ve got is what’s in the register, about two-hundred bucks.”
“Lock the door up and turn the sign over, Norm,” Sal said. “Then go out back slow and easy.”
Norman did exactly as he was told. Walked over to the door, locked it and flipped the Open sign over to show the legend, Closed – Gone Fishin’. He then made his way through to his living quarters in the extension at the rear of the building.
Sal followed him in, pushed the door closed behind him with his left hand and clubbed Norman hard a couple of times across the side of his head.
Norman was dazed and incapacitated by the two crippling blows. He fell to his knees with his eyes tightly shut and his teeth clenched.
Sal had absolutely no capacity to feel remorse for his actions. He deftly screwed the silencer to the SIG and held the weapon steady as a rock, angled upwards just two inches away from the base of the man’s skull as he pulled the trigger.
No pain, no memories, no knowledge of having ever existed. Norman exited life without any thought running through a brain that had been instantly reduced to an insensate lump of devastated tissue.
Sal walked to the back of the room and closed the curtains at the windows so that no one could look in to see the body on the floor. He then made his way through a small kitchen and out of a screened door. The diagram on the wall of the reception area had shown that the cabins were positioned in a large semicircle numbered one to fourteen, left to right. And old Norm had been superstitious, because there was no cabin thirteen.
Moving to the left and behind a screen of bushes, Sal followed a trail that skirted the first six cabins and led to the lake. He stepped through a gap onto a short access walkway and stopped in deep shadow at the side of cabin number three.
“Maybe he won’t come back?” Sharon said to her Mum.
“I know he will,” Rita said. “And I’m going to keep believing that. Without Logan, I have no idea what we would do.”
“He could get himself killed trying to protect us. He isn’t even armed.”
“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing, sweetheart. I’ve never met anyone that instilled me with so much confidence.”
“What about Dad?” Sharon said sharply.
“You know what I mean. Logan is in some ways a very dangerous man. He has obviously dealt with violent people before, and has no qualms about hurting them if that is the only way to solve a problem.”
“And you admire that?”
“No, Sharon I don’t admire it, but at this moment in time we need him, and I’m grateful that he has offered to help us. I’m sure that he doesn’t go out of his way to look for trouble. I see him as a loner; a man that would rather keep to himself and not get involved.”
“So why do you think he is helping total strangers?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because he saw a woman in danger and has a chivalrous streak that won’t let him turn his back and walk away. You’ve talked to him. What do you think?”
Sharon recalled the conversation that she had had with Logan. She had never met anyone like him. Her mum was right. He was exactly who they needed to keep them safe from harm. Logan had seemed reluctant to talk about himself, but had opened up a little. Let her see a glimpse of a true individual; a self-sufficient man with no desire to be part of the rat race of life. He was content in his own company and had no real use for other people. Or maybe his only weakness was that he couldn’t face having something or someone to lose, so held the world at bay by moving through it without stopping too long in any one place to start taking root.
“I suppose you’re right, Mum,” Sharon said. “I think he has a sense of duty. He can’t turn his back on a situation and walk away from it.”
Sharon went into the bedroom to get her laptop out of her rucksack. Walked back into the kitchen and headed for the back door. Went out onto the porch, to sit at a rustic bench and power up her computer. She clicked on her Pictures, selected a file and opened one to look at JPEG images of her father, mother and herself.
“Excuse me,” a voice said, and Sharon looked up to see a man wearing a dark suit, white shirt and striped tie walking slowly towards her. She thought that he looked like a businessman. He was swarthy-looking, with dark eyes and black hair, and reminded her of a janitor at high school who’d always been polite and friendly, but came across as creepy; someone you wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with in a dark alley.
Sal smiled at her, and then just climbed up the three steps onto the porch, grabbed her by the throat with his left hand and squeezed hard enough to cut off her breath as he hauled Sharon up off the seat and walked her backwards through the partly open door as he drew his gun.
CHAPTER NINE
Logan drove across the river and made his way to Brandon’s car showroom. Parked in a space outside a print company a hundred yards away and walked back.
It was quiet. Sun glinted off a couple hundred windshields and a ton of chrome. A young salesman in a powder-blue suit was walking a middle-aged woman around a large silver-colored sedan. And a teenager in T-shirt and denim shorts was washing a compact Toyota in a bay.
Logan opened the door and was hit by ice-cold air from vents in the ceiling as he entered the showroom. He walked up to a long, shiny maple veneered counter
and waited for the blond behind it to finish up a call and turn her attention to him.
Marcie smiled as she looked up at the tall, ruggedly handsome man. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, after using her tongue to push the gum she’d been chewing out of the way against the inside of her cheek.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “I need to speak with Jerry.”
“Do you have an appointment, sir?”
“No. But he’ll want to see me, we’re old buddies. Why don’t you just hit the button on your intercom and tell him that Roy’s friend Mr Johnson is here?”
Marcie picked up her phone and hit 2, which connected her to the phone on Jerry’s desk. She told him what Logan had said, word for word, and waited a few seconds until her boss told her to send the visitor in.
“Mr Brandon’s office is through there, first on the left,” Marcie said, pointing to the door at the right-hand side of the counter, and chewing on her gum again as Logan ambled away from her.
He didn’t knock, just walked in and took a seat in the chair facing Jerry Brandon across a large teak desk.
“So you’re Johnson,” Jerry said, reluctantly impressed by the sheer size of the man who was staring impassively at him.
“It’s as good a name as any,” Logan said, noting that Brandon’s eyes flicked down and to the left a couple of times, to where there was probably a half-open drawer with a gun in it.
“And just exactly what do you want?” Jerry asked. “Why have you come here?”
Logan said nothing. Just kept looking at Brandon, intimidating him by nothing more than his presence and the fact that the man knew what he’d done to Roy Naylor.
“Either share what’s on your mind or get the hell out,” Jerry said.
Logan could see beads of sweat beginning to form at the hairline of what he decided was a toupee; an expensive one, but still as phony as the man wearing it.
“OK,” Logan said. “I came here because you don’t listen to good free advice when it’s given. I just stopped by for coffee with Sammy, and he told me that you still want Mendez to finish what he started. As you can imagine, Sammy is now in a lot of pain, and in deep shit with the police, who will be at his address as we speak and will have found drugs and an illegal firearm to spike their interest in him. Maybe the gun has history. One way or the other it’s another of your third-rate team out of the picture.”
