by Jason Dean
Joanne Walsh paused. ‘Um, possibly. May I ask the reason?’
‘Well, it’s nothing important really, but if we can get a nice quote from somebody who’s actually met royalty, it might add some pizzazz to the article. You know, something to end the piece with. It would get your company a mention, too, of course.’
‘I see. Well, I think I might be able to find their names for you. Do you want me to call you back, um, Rhinehart?’
Not really, thought Bishop. ‘Probably best if I stay on the line, Ms Walsh. As soon as I’m done with this I’m out of the country on another assignment.’
‘Oh. Okay. Can you hold for a few minutes then?’
‘No problem.’ Bishop leaned his shoulder against the wall and studied the nearest washer. A light blue sock was visible through the glass and he watched it move in soapy circles. He kept a count of how many times it reached the top of the barrel and then tried to work out how this related to the number of revolutions per minute. He’d decided it was probably kicking in at around the seven hundred mark when Joanne Walsh returned.
‘Right. Well, I found the names for you, but I’m not sure what good they’ll do as one of them . . . well, he passed away a few years ago. He was a businessman who used us quite a lot.’
‘Oh, no,’ Bishop said. ‘Well, maybe I can still talk to the one who’s still around; the second guy.’ Bishop realized his hand was squeezing the phone a lot tighter. ‘Do you have his name there?’
‘I do. It’s Adam Cortiss.’
‘Adam Cortiss,’ he said. ‘That’s fantastic, Ms Walsh. Thanks very much, you’ve been a great help. We’ll send your office a copy when it gets printed.’
‘Please do,’ she said and Bishop hung up, whistling through his teeth. Now he had a name. Adam Cortiss. Things were looking up.
TWENTY-TWO
Bishop went over to the table and checked the covers of the three current White Pages directories stacked next to the magazines. Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Picking up the Manhattan book, he opened it at the Ts and leafed through the pages.
After a few moments, he smiled as he came upon the sole listing for ‘Thorpe, Martin H’. Bishop remembered Thorpe once revealing that the H stood for Heath, and that he suspected his mother of being drunk when she came up with it. The phone number was still the same as before, and Bishop was faintly surprised that Thorpe hadn’t gone the unlisted route. Maybe he felt he hadn’t reached that level of success quite yet. Still living in the same rent-controlled uptown apartment, too.
Bishop closed the book, picked up the phone again and fed it some more coins. He began dialling the number but when he reached the last digit, instead of pressing the five button to connect to Thorpe, he pressed six.
After a short wait, a deep male voice said, ‘Yeah?’
‘Hey,’ Bishop said. ‘It’s Frank. Can I talk to Larry?’
‘Who?’
‘Larry. Larry Foster. Who’s this I’m talking to?’
‘This is Domingo. Ain’t no Larry here, pal.’
‘Oh, sorry. Must have misdialled. Thanks.’
Bishop pressed down on the receiver and released it again. After inserting more change, he dialled the correct number and waited as it rang.
Shortly, a familiar voice said, ‘Hello?’
Adopting the same lazy Texas drawl as Carmody from this morning, Bishop said, ‘Hey, there. Domingo left yet? He was supposed to be here half-hour ago. I can’t wait all day.’
There was a short pause. ‘You got the wrong number.’
‘Aw, hell.’ Bishop quoted the previous number and said, ‘That’s right, ain’t it?’
‘All except the last part,’ Thorpe said. ‘This number ends with a five.’
‘Shoot. Sorry ’bout that. I’ll try again.’
Bishop smiled as he placed the phone back on the hook. While he couldn’t be sure the feds were listening in on his ex-colleagues’ phone calls, it was better to assume they were. In which case, a quick check on Domingo’s number would tell them the last call was nothing more than a genuine misdial.
But Bishop now had the information he needed. Thorpe was at home today. And in Bishop’s experience, people were generally creatures of habit in their down time. He checked Cook’s watch. 11.39. Getting close to lunchtime for many people this fine Sunday.
And he had a pretty good idea where Thorpe would spend his.
TWENTY-THREE
Smelling strongly of chlorine, the uniformly grey changing room contained three long aisles with lockers on both sides and four wooden benches running down the centre of each. With the visor of his baseball cap hiding his features, Bishop sat on a bench in the middle aisle and fiddled with the buttons on the diver’s watch. It was 13.06, and he was waiting for the skinny teenager ten feet away to finish packing away the last of his gear. Bishop watched him carefully place a pair of grey sneakers with a flashy star design into the locker before finally closing it and moving off towards the pool.
Then the place was quiet except for the muffled sound of running water coming from the next room. That’s where Thorpe was. Four minutes ago, Bishop had watched him exit the corridor leading from the pool, wearing a stylish pair of purple and black trunks, and head for the showers.
Thorpe had once mentioned that he’d joined the Asphalt Green Sports Center on East 90th Street partly because it was never crowded, but mostly because it boasted the only Olympic-sized swimming pool in Manhattan. And Thorpe was serious about his fitness. Any time he got a day off, Bishop knew he liked to spend his lunchtime doing laps and he guessed an arm injury wouldn’t stop him. In fact it probably helped, so Bishop made a wild gamble and it had paid off.
He had taken the subway into Manhattan, gotten off at the 86th Street station and walked the rest of the way. This far into town no one paid any attention to anyone else; they were all too busy. So as long as he kept moving he reckoned he was safe. At reception, he’d parted with thirty-five dollars and received a day pass and a locker key in return.
Soon, the sounds coming from the shower faucets stopped. Then Bishop heard the unmistakable sound of wet soles against tile. As the footsteps got closer, he got up and turned to the line of lockers on the right. He placed his key in number 317 and waited. The footsteps came to a halt in the adjacent aisle. Then there was the sound of another lock being turned.
Bishop removed his key and walked to the end of the row. He turned left and peered round into the next aisle. A kneeling man with a towel around his waist had his back to Bishop. He was pulling out a folded white T-shirt from a locker and placing it on the long bench behind him. Then came a pair of white Nike sneakers, which he set down next to a pair of damp purple and black trunks.
As the man turned back to pull out the rest of his possessions, Bishop silently walked forward and sat on one end of the bench. Keeping his voice low, he said, ‘Hello, Thorpe. Don’t bother turning round.’
Thorpe froze, holding a pair of a tracksuit pants in both hands. ‘Okay.’
‘You recognize my voice?’
‘I think so. You been on TV recently?’
‘My fifteen minutes, if you believe Andy Warhol.’
Thorpe nodded. ‘So, did you get hold of Domingo in the end?’
Bishop smiled. Thorpe still had his sense of humour, at least. ‘He never showed. I had to leave without him.’
‘He’ll get over it. Got to admit, you had me fooled. It sounded nothing like you, but I should have guessed. A wrong number the same day you escape from prison?’ Thorpe clicked his tongue and said, ‘Any particular reason why I can’t turn round?’
Bishop thought about it and decided the cap hid his new haircut well enough. But he kept hold of the Beretta in his jacket pocket. ‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘Go ahead. Take a load off.’
Thorpe turned slowly and got to his feet. He looked at Bishop, dropped the pants onto the white T-shirt and sat down on his side of the bench.
He hadn’t changed much in three years. Still in good shape,
no doubt due to the swimming. Same prominent jawline. Same comma-shaped scar on his upper lip. The thick light brown hair was as short as ever, but Bishop noticed a few grey strands in there. And maybe there were a few more laugh lines around the eyes.
Thorpe glanced briefly at the jacket pocket concealing Bishop’s hand and smiled. ‘I know you won’t believe me, but it’s good to see you.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. Makes it easier for me to ask a favour.’
Thorpe frowned and used a palm to pat down a crease in his tracksuit. ‘That kind of depends on how big the favour is. Don’t get me wrong, Bishop; it is good to see you, but I don’t want to end up sharing a cell with you.’
Bishop smiled. ‘And here was I thinking you’d be anxious to pay me back after what I did for you in Seattle.’
Eight years before, Bishop’s first assignment as a team leader had been to guard a rock promoter on the west coast after he had a major falling out with some local gang-bangers. The three-man team, consisting of Bishop, Thorpe and a man named Romario, had been driving him back from a business meet one evening when their route was blocked by two cars full of armed men who began throwing down fire in their direction. Bishop managed to get out and dislodge a nearby sewer grate and, while he laid down covering fire, ordered Thorpe and Romario to get the principal out of the area via the drainage tunnels.
Amazingly, the cops were on the scene in no time at all and while they went after the shooters, Bishop climbed down into the narrow, dark tunnel and saw that his principal and Romario had gotten away okay. The same couldn’t be said for Thorpe. He was still down there, writhing around in a foetal position, calling on Bishop to get him out before the walls squeezed the life out of him.
A fear of enclosed spaces would have ended any other bodyguard’s career, but Bishop covered for him in his report. In all other respects, the guy was a natural, so Bishop picked him for his team in all future assignments. He just made sure Thorpe was never put into that kind of situation again.
Thorpe’s frown became deeper and he stopped fiddling with his clothing. ‘Yeah, you got a point there. I guess I do owe you one, at that.’ He sighed and said, ‘So what do you need?’
‘Nothing major. Just some simple information retrieval. I want you to go to the office and dig up everything you can on a man named Adam Cortiss.’ Bishop spelled out the surname and said, ‘History, current status, everything. The guy’s definitely a player and I know you got files on everybody over there. There’s bound to be something on him.’
Thorpe said, ‘You want to give me a clue who he is or am I working completely in the dark here?’
Just then, a slightly overweight man came in from the shower room and both men paused as he began walking towards them, tightening the towel around his ample waist. Halfway down, he turned and disappeared into the next aisle.
‘Cortiss used to work for Brennan,’ said Bishop. ‘He was also the fourth member of the assault team. The one who escaped without a trace.’
There was a short silence, as though Thorpe was thinking through the full implications of what Bishop was saying. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it,’ Bishop said. ‘And I need it now. Can you do it?’
‘Assuming I can, how do you want it delivered?’
Bishop pulled a piece of paper containing his new email address from his pants pocket and handed it over. ‘Send it to this address as an attachment. That way we don’t need to risk another meeting.’
‘Okay.’ Thorpe reached into the locker and pulled out a thin wallet. He took out a RoyseCorp business card and offered it to Bishop. ‘It’s got my business cell number on there in case you need to reach me, but I should have something for you in a few hours.’
‘The sooner the better,’ Bishop said. He memorized the number without touching the card. Then he stood up, left hand still in his pocket. ‘I’ll keep checking throughout the day.’
‘Right,’ Thorpe said. ‘But look, if you really didn’t . . .’
‘Thanks,’ Bishop said, cutting him off. Then he turned and left before Thorpe could say anything else.
TWENTY-FOUR
Returning to the scene was a bad risk in anybody’s language. Yet here he was. On Long Island again. At the Brennan place where his life had been turned inside out and seven others had come to a violent end.
But risky or not, Bishop always knew he’d return the first chance he got. He had to.
The house had been abandoned since the murders. The widowed Mrs Brennan now lived in one of her husband’s town apartments with apparently no intention of ever occupying this place again. Bishop couldn’t really blame her. And with her husband’s life insurance payout and the money from his will, she now had the kind of bank balance that meant she could afford to leave the estate empty for as long as she wanted.
The bus had brought him to a stop two miles away. After a brief visit to a nearby hardware store where he’d bought a long plastic-handled screwdriver and a small pair of wire cutters, he’d walked the rest. It had been a pleasant enough hike with only a handful of vehicles passing him along the way, none of them law. The same security fencing still surrounded the entire perimeter and Bishop approached it from the north side. A simple touch test with the screwdriver showed there was no electrical current running through it any more. After that, the small wire cutters made short work of the chain link fence and he slipped through the opening, then made his way through the dense, overgrown woods until he reached the gazebo at the back of the house.
As he passed, he inspected the stone floor of the gazebo for old blood stains. Something to indicate Thorpe’s presence here three years ago. But of course there was nothing.
Bishop reached the house and just stood there for a moment in the mid-afternoon heat, listening to the singing of birds all around him. In front of him was the rear door and the ridiculously expensive anti-blast picture windows. The door was the same model and same colour as before, but given what had happened it was definitely new.
To Bishop’s left was the four-car garage that extended out from the house with the roof serving as a balcony for the room overlooking it. And by the side of the garage was a small clutch of oak trees with plenty of low branches. After taking a deep breath and stretching his arms, he climbed onto a low but firm-looking branch and didn’t stop climbing until he was able to jump onto the garage roof. The buzz of pain from his stomach pushed him on. It served as an almost constant reminder of what he’d done so far and was now becoming an old friend.
His cellmate, Jorge, had always been eager to pass on his extensive lock-picking knowledge to anybody who would listen and Bishop now used that lesson on the balcony door’s lock. Fifty-five seconds later he slid the glass door open and stepped into the room. The floor was still carpeted and there were drapes above the windows, but everything else was gone. No furniture; nothing to give any indication as to the room’s previous purpose. But Bishop still remembered. This had been Natalie’s den, a room she’d preferred to her second-floor bedroom. The room he’d been running for when the rear door blew up in his face.
As Bishop walked through the house, he wondered if the trip here had been worth the risk after all. The kitchen, corridors, entrance foyer and staircases offered up nothing new. A few stains here and there where blood had seeped past the carpet fibres and lodged in the matting, but nothing more. With a head full of memories related to the day of the attack, he’d hoped that coming back here would trigger something important he’d missed. Something still lodged in his subconscious. But instead the same thoughts and images kept spinning round in a circle. And no new answers to slow the merry-go-round down.
Finally, Bishop climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor and entered the room where it all ended.
TWENTY-FIVE
The only furniture left in Randall Brennan’s office was the desk and the ceiling-high bookshelves. All had been emptied and Bishop saw nothing on the table’s polished surface except a few smeared finge
rprints. Nothing on the walls either, except pale rectangles where Brennan’s celebrity photos once hung alongside framed enlargements of his favourite rare stamps. Bishop knelt down in front of the desk, brushing his fingers over the cream-coloured carpet. This was a replacement. Had to be. No way they could have gotten all the bloodstains out of the old one. No cleaning company on earth was that good. Mrs Brennan probably had it replaced the moment the police wrapped up their investigation.
He walked over to the shelves and swept his fingers over every surface until he found the hidden switch. It sat at the back of the fourth shelf down and looked like a natural swelling in the wood, but was actually made of a hard plastic. Easy to miss, even when you were looking for it. Now that he thought about the layout for this part of the house, it seemed obvious that there was an unaccounted-for space between this room and the huge bathroom on the other side. But then, lots of things only become obvious after the fact.
Bishop pressed the wood-coloured lump and heard a metallic click. After a few pushes the shelves slid apart.
The vault door was a steel panel, about three foot by seven, set into a steel internal frame and a larger face frame. An old-fashioned combination wheel sat in the centre, and next to it was a foot-long steel handle. More a bar, really. Like something on a slot machine, but without the black orb at the end.
He grabbed hold of the bar and tried pushing it down, grunting a little with the effort. But all he got out of it was another jab of pain in his stomach. It didn’t budge. Bishop took a step back and looked at it. He wondered how long Mrs Brennan had waited after the crime scene boys had finished up before clearing the office and vault of her husband’s things. Probably not long at all. Keeping busy with day-to-day tasks is generally the best remedy for bereavement. In which case, it was likely this safe hadn’t been reopened in the last thirty-five months. Mrs Brennan might have even forgotten the combination by now, assuming she ever knew it in the first place.
