Omega Dog - 01

by Tim Stevens

  And last, but best of all: at a little after noon, Rosetti’s people – Vincenzo, specifically – got an excited call from a motel clerk up in Massachusetts. He’d just come on duty, and a big guy had come in to hand back the room key. The clerk had received a handover from the guy whose shift he’d taken over from. There was apparently a couple who’d rented one of the rooms a few hours earlier, presumably for you-know-what. After the clerk took the key back, he happened to glance out the window.

  And saw the Impala, with the tell-tale license plate.

  He got on the phone immediately.

  Vincenzo relayed the news to Rosetti by phone. Rosetti felt a stirring within her, the closest she came to excitement or even enthusiasm these days.

  The first real-time information on Colby’s whereabouts.

  She didn’t need to tell Vincenzo what to do. He was already on it.

  Across Massachusetts, across New England, the network web began to tremble.

  The reward promised for a tip-off that led to Colby’s apprehension doubled. Then tripled. Every minor player, every wiseguy wannabe who had even the remotest link to the Rosetti crew, was contacted.

  And made aware that this could be his lucky day. That helpfulness in finding the Colby woman would be looked on favorably by the boss. Very favorably indeed.

  A steady stream of visitors flowed to and from the motel, wanting to interview the clerk there to see if there was a scrap of information that could be useful, a morsel of data that others might have missed and which might lead to some advantage in finding the Impala and its passengers.

  A couple of hours after noon, Rosetti began to hear new reports. A wrecked car, a Jaguar, had been found in a field off a side road near the motel. In the trunk was a dead man who’d been beaten to a pulp.

  The description of the corpse was vague, coming as it did third- or fourth-hand from leaked police reports. Also, there wasn’t much left of the guy’s face to be able to describe. But the account of his clothes made Rosetti sit up in her wheelchair and take notice.

  Specifically, his shoes.

  They were described as old-fashioned leather spats, brown and cream in color.

  Rosetti stared at Vincenzo, who was relaying the information to her.

  ‘It’s him,’ she said.

  ‘Royle?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A lot of guys might have shoes like that.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s him.’

  So Marcus Royle, international hitman of note, had been defeated.

  Which raised the question once again: just who was Joseph Venn, this mystery man helping Dr Colby?

  ‘Vincenzo,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘When we find them, Colby and this Venn guy, we need to throw everything at them. You understand? Every man, every bullet we can dredge up.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Chapter 52

  Beth drove. She’d insisted on it, and for once Venn hadn’t argued.

  Not much, anyhow.

  ‘At least for the first hour or so,’ she’d said, after checking him out with expert hands as he sat by the side of the road, probing him for broken bones. ‘You look like you could black out at any moment. I don’t especially want you to lose consciousness behind the wheel in the middle of the interstate.’

  The Impala was badly dented at the back where the Jaguar had rammed it, but the sports car had actually come off worse. The Chevy was still drivable.

  Venn had searched the body of the man he’d killed, reluctantly, as if loath to touch or even look at the mess he’d made of the guy’s face. Beth was surprised how she felt. Or rather, at how little she felt. There was no revulsion in her for the sickening violence she’d witnessed, no appalled realization at how close they had both just come to death.

  It would come later, she knew. All of it, in a great sweeping flood.

  Venn found nothing useful on the dead man, apart from his gun, some extra ammo, and a cell phone. The guy carried no ID of any kind.

  Venn scrolled through various functions on the phone. He said, ‘It’s a new one. Not much on it. No list of contacts. He must have kept all of his numbers in his head.’

  ‘How did he find us?’ asked Beth. ‘He couldn’t have been tailing us all this way.’

  ‘He tracked us, somehow,’ said Venn. ‘My guess is he got a lock on my phone. That means he’s got friends in high places. My bad. I should have gotten rid of my own phone when I tossed yours.’

  He took the SIM card out of his phone, ground it into the blacktop with his boot heel, and threw the phone itself into the field. He did the same with the phone he’d taken off the dead man.

  Then he took out another phone. Beth recognized it as the one he’d told her his employer, Corcoran, had given him. For a moment he stood looking at it.

  ‘I might have been tracked through this,’ he said. ‘But I doubt it. It would have been easier to find out the number of my regular phone. And if I get rid of this one, Corcoran has no way of contacting me.’

  Apparently making his mind up, he put the phone back in his pocket.

  Beth helped him dump the body in the trunk of the Jaguar and roll the damaged car into the ditch alongside the road. It wasn’t much of an attempt to hide evidence of what had gone down, but they had little choice, and as Venn said it might buy them a few precious minutes.

  ‘Because there’ll be others,’ Venn said grimly. ‘Maybe lots of others.’

  They drove in silence, and it wasn’t till they’d crossed the border into Maine that Beth said, ‘Thank you.’

  He stared at her. ‘For what?’

  ‘For saving my life. Again.’

  Venn said nothing.

  Beth tried again. ‘You had to kill him. You had no choice.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Venn.

  ‘But?’

  His tone was low, measured. ‘But I didn’t have to kill him the way I did. I snapped. I lost control.’

  ‘Venn, you were in an extreme situation. You weren’t yourself –’

  ‘That’s just the problem, Beth. I was myself. This is me. I’m bad news.’ He was looking straight ahead now. ‘The drug dealer I beat up on in Chicago, that got me fired. That was just the one I got nailed for. There were others. I go over the top. Can’t seem to help myself.’

  ‘But you’re not like that all the time.’ Beth tried not to sound like she was sermonizing. ‘Earlier, when we were... together. That was the real you.’

  ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘What?’ She veered a little toward the next lane. ‘How can you –’

  ‘Beth, I should never have let it happen. We were two people thrown together in a stressful situation. But it can’t happen again. Like I say, I’m bad news. You don’t want to be around me.’

  Beth felt her temper rise, and she fought to keep it down. Couldn’t explode, right here behind the wheel. ‘How dare you? How dare you tell me what I do and don’t want? And what’s this about you letting it happen? In case you hadn’t noticed, I was there too! I made a choice, too.’

  ‘I didn’t –’ he started to say, but she cut him off.

  ‘Big, tough guys like you. Inside, emotionally, you’re like little scared kids. I’ve seen it so many times. You’ll take on an army single-handed, but you run screaming from ever having to face up to what you’re feeling inside.’

  That shut him up again, and Beth didn’t feel like breaking the silence this time.

  She sat seething behind the wheel for the next hour. The road wound through increasingly dense pine forest, and the air felt noticeably cooler as they climbed higher.

  Venn said, ‘Do you want me to take over?’

  ‘The little lady’s perfectly capable of driving a car, thank you very much,’ Beth snapped.

  Venn held up his hands in resignation.

  The satnav spoke up in its slightly robotic woman’s voice, telling them to turn off in a hundred yards.

  Beth looked at the d
isplay.

  Their destination was just twenty miles away.

  For the first time since the episode with the Jaguar man, she felt a shiver of fear.

  Chapter 53

  Shelly drove well above the speed limit most of the way, using the speed camera detector in the Hummer to dodge the highway patrols. She made it to northern Massachusetts in under two hours.

  By then her sources had provided her with a few updates. The local cops had interviewed a motel clerk nearby the scene where the dead guy had been found in the trunk of the Jaguar. The clerk, Al Kennedy, had described two people who could only have been Colby and the big man who was helping her. They’d checked out, but he hadn’t seen which car they’d driven away in. Or he couldn’t recall. His story was a little vague.

  Well, Shelly would have to jog his memory.

  Her contact had told her back in New York that the body in the trunk, though badly beaten, fitted the description of the guy who’d killed the police officers last night and escaped from the ambulance. Shelly figured there had to be a connection with the big guy, Colby’s helper. Probably the big guy had killed him.

  So he and Colby were headed north through New England.

  As she drove the Hummer into the parking lot of the motel, Shelly saw four men emerge from the reception. They all wore lightweight suits, Italian-cut and flashy, and all had slicked back hair or mirror shades or both.

  Shelly knew mobsters when she saw them.

  She waited for the men to leave – yep, Italian sports cars, too – and then climbed down from the Hummer. She had the Sig Sauer in a holster inside her jacket, and the Ka-Bar knife in its sheath at her side.

  The interior of the reception was gloomy in contrast with the brilliant sunshine outside, and stank of stale sweat. Shelly turned the sign on the door to Sorry, we’re closed.

  A skinny guy sat behind the desk, studying a copy of Penthouse magazine. He glanced up, ran his gaze down Shelly and up again, then flicked his eyes back to the magazine. As if he was combining two images in his head.

  ‘Al Kennedy?’ Shelly said, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ he grinned back, unable to keep the leer out of his voice. Shelly guessed he was something of a minor celebrity at the moment.

  ‘Police,’ she said, flashing her shield long enough that he could see it was genuine but not long enough to reveal she was from out of state.

  He raised his eyebrows, taken aback for a moment. But he quickly regained some of his cockiness.

  ‘How can I help you, Miss Officer?’ He glanced about, as if wondering where her partner was. Cops always worked in pairs, didn’t they?

  ‘Those guys just now,’ she said. ‘The ones in suits. Who were they, and what did they want?’

  Al Kennedy smiled ruefully, as if to say, I really want to be able to help, but...

  ‘I’m afraid that’s confidential, Officer.’

  Shelly wasn’t in the mood. With a quick movement she drew the knife and grabbed the guy by his greasy hair, pressing the tip of the blade into one nostril.

  ‘I’ll ask again, Al. Who were those fuckin’ guys?’

  His eyes wide with shock, his nose wrinkling in an attempt to get it away from the cold steel tip, Al stammered: ‘I c-c-can’t tell you. Believe me. I just can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Shelly pressed infinitely gently. A bead of blood formed on Al’s nose.

  ‘They’d k-kill me.’

  Shelly chuckled. ‘Boy, have you got your priorities screwed up, Al.’

  She didn’t think he’d make a run for it, but she drew the Sig Sauer anyway, and motioned for him to precede her through the door leading to the office in back.

  As luck would have it, steps led down from the door to a basement office. Perfect. She gave Al a little push so that he stumbled into the room. Then she indicated for him to sit down on one of the rickety chairs that were standing about.

  Amongst all the clutter in the office, Shelly found several very useful items. These included a roll of duct tape, a hammer and some nails, a pair of pliers, and a disposable cigarette lighter.

  Quickly she taped him securely to the chair and wound some of the tape round his head, attaching a piece of cloth to be used as an on-off gag.

  ‘Now, Al,’ Shelly said cheerfully. ‘How about we start again?’

  He held out longer than she’d been expecting, and Shelly was impressed despite herself. These guys really had put the fear of God into old Al here. It took her a full fifteen minutes to get everything she needed from him, or at least everything she was reasonably confident he was capable of providing.

  By the end, when even Shelly was starting to sweat a little, she’d learned the model and license plate number of the Chevy that Colby and the big guy were driving. She learned the name of the big guy: Joseph Venn. She learned that the gentlemen who’d just paid Al a visit were working for DeeDee Rosetti, and that several other such teams of mobsters had also come calling, each seeking an angle. And the reason Al had told the cops he hadn’t noticed or couldn’t remember Venn and Colby’s car, was that Rosetti had told him to shut up about it.

  Even though they were in the basement, Shelly didn’t want to risk anybody hearing Al’s screams, so she had to keep replacing the gag. And at some point, Al vomited while the gag was in place, and choked on his own puke.

  Ah, well. He’d probably told her all he knew already, anyhow.

  Shelly cut his throat, just to make sure he was dead. She took care to do it from behind and not to get enough of his blood on her that it might be noticed.

  Outside, the sunlight was blinding, and Shelly slipped her shades on.

  Well, well. So Rosetti had given up on Shelly and had decided instead to carry out the hit on Colby in-house, using her own goons. And by the look of it, she was throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the problem.

  Shelly was already thinking how she could use this to her advantage.

  She was on the phone as she started the Hummer’s engine.

  Chapter 54

  They’d been following a seemingly endless winding road up the side of a steep hill, dense forest concealing almost everything but the immediate path ahead, when Venn spotted it.

  The log walls of a cabin, up ahead through the trees.

  ‘Pull up here,’ he said.

  Beth looked at him quizzically.

  ‘It’s better that we approach on foot,’ he said. ‘Less noisy.’

  She parked up at the side of the road and they got out. All around was an immense silence, broken only by occasional birdcalls, as if the forest was acting as some kind of seal between them and the world outside.

  Venn had already stripped and reloaded both his Beretta and the Smith & Wesson that had belonged to the dead guy. His gun was a little scuffed, but otherwise none the worse for having been clipped by the man’s bullet earlier.

  He handed the S&W to Beth, indicating for her to put it away. She did so awkwardly, stuffing it down the waistband of her trousers.

  Together they crept between the pine trees, Venn leading the way.

  The cabin was a large one, a home rather than a place to stay on a weekend break. It spread out across a couple of acres of land, the lawns neatly trimmed. In front of the cabin was a gravel forecourt on which were parked two cars. An SUV of some kind, though Venn couldn’t see the make from where they were. And a Toyota sedan.

  ‘Stay on the perimeter,’ Venn muttered. At a crouch, they began to advance round the edge of the lawn toward the cabin.

  The front door opened suddenly, and an enormously obese man came lumbering out. He was in his sixties, easily three hundred pounds although he couldn’t have been more than five feet eight tall. He was unshaven, and he had long, oily gray ringlets tumbling down untidily around his face.

  In his hands he carried a hunting rifle.

  Without pausing to speak, he took aim and fired.

  Venn barreled into Beth, knocking her to the ground as the shot sang over his head, t
oo close for comfort.

  ‘Wait,’ he yelled. ‘Hold your fire.’

  And he stood up, shakily, his arms raised.

  The man stood on the porch, sighting down the rifle.

  This is it, thought Venn. He braced himself.

  To Beth behind him, he hissed: ‘For God’s sake, run. Get back to the car and get out of here.’

  Time froze.

  Across the expanse of lawn, Venn imagined he could see in minute detail the tightening of the man’s finger on the trigger.

  Venn would dive, of course. But there was no way he’d avoid a second shot. Nor did he have a snowball’s chance of drawing his own gun in time, far less aiming and firing.

  The large man lowered the rifle to the level of Venn’s throat.

  In heavily accented English, he called out: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘We’re friends of Professor Lomax.’

  The name had an electrifying effect on the man. He raised the gun again sharply. Again Venn gritted his teeth against the shot that was coming.

  Before he could stop her, Beth stepped forward so she was alongside him.

  ‘Prof Lomax doesn’t know this man,’ she called. ‘But he knows me. Dr Beth Colby.’

  The fat man stared at her. Then, very slowly, very deliberately, he paced backward, the gun never wavering from Venn. When he got to the front door of the cabin, and without turning his head, he called something through the door which Venn didn’t catch.

  From far off, another voice sounded, barely audible.

  The fat man once again lowered the gun a fraction.

  ‘Come,’ he said.

  Chapter 55

  The doorway was low, so that Venn had to stoop when walking through it. Inside, the cabin smelled musty, like it needed an airing.

  Beth followed him in. The fat man, still holding the gun but with it pointing down now, watched them suspiciously.