by Rob Ashman
‘There are times when the best laid plans don’t survive first contact and we have to react accordingly. It’s the outcome that’s important not how we got there.’
‘I know, but this was a straightforward in-and-out job. The only collateral damage was supposed to be her driver’s side window and a CCTV camera, not a whole fucking store, a truck and another dead body.’
‘You dealt with the situation and made it work. Don’t be hard on yourself. The client got the result he wanted, he’s not going to care about the other stuff.’
‘Thanks, I suppose I just needed to hear it.’
‘Go look at your bank balance, that will make you feel better.’
Mechanic took the camera from her face and flashed him a sideways smile. Jameson flashed one back.
‘How you doing?’ Mechanic asked.
‘I’m mending slowly. I’ll be back in work tomorrow.’
‘I was thinking another meeting would be good.’
Jameson’s bruised cock twitched into life.
‘You say when and I’ll be there. But it’s probably better if it’s not for the next week or so.’
They allowed the moment to pass, both pretending to look at the skyline in the distance, each one picturing their favourite scene from the other night.
Mechanic broke the silence.
‘Any more work in the pipeline?’
‘We have one but it’s too early to tell.’
‘I need to disappear for a while. I’ll be gone a few days.’
‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Not sure. I need you to do something.’
‘What is it?’
‘I want you to trace Lieutenant Commander Stewart Sells. I’ve lost touch and I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. If it’s the latter, I want to know where he is, and if it’s the former I want to know where he’s buried.’
‘Who is he?’
‘My father.’
Moran got off the courtesy bus and made her way up the steps to the plane. The stewardess took her ticket stub and pointed out the correct aisle for her to find her seat. This was a flight of desperation, but it was her only remaining option if she wanted to stay a free woman. She took off forty-five minutes later.
Moran ate the in-flight food and listened to the piped music through cheap plastic headphones. She also downed three small bottles of wine, which had the desired effect. By the time the plane touched down in Atlanta she had been asleep for at least two hours.
The turnaround was mercifully short. After a quick bite to eat she was back in her seat on a different plane, ready to make the one hour and seven minute flight to Tallahassee.
The plane landed on time. In the arrivals hall she found the passenger information desk and used the house phones to call various hotels. Each hotel was advertised with a sunny picture and a speed dial button to contact them. On her third attempt she booked a room at the Days Inn for one night. The courtesy car picked her up outside and forty minutes later she was in bed. It was quarter to one in the morning.
She stared at the digits on the clock and reflected on a catastrophic day. She had gone from feeling good about life to lying in a strange bed in a different state and facing a disciplinary charge, all in the space of eighteen hours. Well, twenty-one hours if you count the time difference. And on that thought, exhausted, she went to sleep.
Moran had woken to a beautiful spring morning. After a shower and coffee she’d settled her bill with cash, hailed a cab and headed into the city. She was sitting at a bus stop, holding another coffee and looking at the front of the public records office. It was closed and wasn’t due to open for another ten minutes. The morning commuters were also waiting at the stop, which provided her with cover.
Moran thought about the chain of events which must have happened after she left the office. Mills would have touched base with HR to inform them of her suspension and that she had been escorted from the premises. He would have reassigned her work to another person in the team, someone who already had the workload of two people. Even if Mills made it a top priority they wouldn’t have analysed the bank records before today. So, given the time difference, she had three hours before whoever had the file would start making calls. That was ample time.
Moran had been on an early morning shopping trip and hated the results. She was dressed in a bright yellow puffer jacket, a bright red be any hat, which covered her head and most of her face, and thick-rimmed glasses. She hated the jacket, but it was the only item of clothing she could find at 8am which was at the other end of the colour spectrum to what she normally wore.
Through the frosted plate glass she saw the blurred outline of a figure unlocking the large doors. The public records office was open for business. Moran pulled her case along behind her and crossed the road. She pushed open the door and slipped inside. The building had the distinctive smell of polish and boredom. She approached the front desk.
‘I’m looking for a company – it’s called Herald Holdings.’ Moran figured giving the real name was not a smart move and the name Herald would at least put her in the right area alphabetically.
‘That’s on the fourth floor. Come out of the elevator and turn right.’
Moran thanked the woman.
On the fourth floor she entered a huge hall crammed with shelves, each one stacked with files and ledgers. There were rows along both sides and two more down the centre. She scanned the interior looking for surveillance cameras. There was CCTV in reception and outside the elevators but she could see none in the hall. She made her way down the centre aisle looking for H.
She walked up and down reading off the company names. This was going to be more challenging than she expected.
A young guy with glasses hurried past.
‘Are you alright, ma’am. Can I help?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ The guy went to walk on. ‘On second thoughts, could you show me where to find Herald?’
The young man was delighted to be of service. Normally customers gave him the brush-off, so an opportunity to show off his encyclopaedic knowledge was rare.
‘Of course, ma’am, it’s down here.’ He weaved his way through the maze and stopped against a wall of files. ‘Which one were you looking for?’
‘It’s fine thanks, I can take it from here.’
‘Okay, give me a shout if you need more help.’ He walked away triumphant.
Moran waited until he had gone, pulled on a pair of gloves and ran her finger across the spines of the folders.
‘Hartwell, Haskins, Haven.’ She read the names under her breath as she shuffled down the aisle.
She heard someone enter the hall. She couldn’t see who it was but she was no longer the only visitor.
‘Hawshore, Healing, Helix. Got it. Helix Holdings.’
She could hear the quiet tones of a conversation. There was more than one new visitor.
Moran pulled the Helix Holdings folder from the stack and laid it on the floor. She knelt down, flipped it open and read through the documents looking for anything that said Sheldon Chemicals or Gerry Vickers.
The voices were getting closer. She stopped what she was doing and stood up. She eased her fingers between two large files and prized them apart, peering between them. A tall man in a grey suit was walking in her direction, accompanied by a uniformed police officer.
Shit! Her mind went into overdrive. Mills must have contacted the local precinct to sequester the file.
How the hell did they get here so fast? Mills never did anything that fast. No one did anything that fast. The words crashed around in her head.
She dropped to the floor and rummaged her way through the documents, there was so much paper. She could hear them clearly now as they got closer. They were coming down the central aisle to her left.
Moran furiously turned over page after page.
None of it said Sheldon.
None of it said Vickers.
She could hear their footsteps. She stood up and squinted through th
e files again, the men were almost on her.
Moran slammed the file shut and rammed it inside her jacket. She straightened out the remaining folders on the shelf and walked to the opposite end of the row. As the men entered the one side, she disappeared out the other.
What the hell was she going to do now? If the police suspected foul play they would lock down the building and that was not good news.
She walked casually out of the hall dragging her case behind her. She crossed the atrium, past the elevators and into the opposite hall. There she found a corner between two shelves, dropped to the floor and pulled the file from under her coat.
She spread the paperwork around her and frantically sifted through it. After much sorting and cursing she found a page relating to Sheldon Chemicals, then another and another. Then the documents relating to Gerry Vickers came thick and fast. Soon she had a wad of papers set to one side. She opened her bag and stuffed them in.
Moran checked the coast was clear and headed for the elevators, taking care to keep her back to the camera located in the corner. She pressed the down arrow and waited, her heart rate returning to normal. Seconds later the doors opened with a metallic ding. She stepped inside and hit level two. The doors trundled together, and were nearly closed when a fat hand darted between them, holding them open. They slid apart, and the cop and grey-suited man got in.
‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ the cop said when he saw Moran.
She nodded and stared at the floor.
The grey-suited guy was trying to minimise his embarrassment, explaining away the absence of the file. He hit level one.
‘We’ll get to the bottom of it, officer. It occasionally happens that files get misplaced. People don’t always put them back in the correct location. We have a barcode system which identifies the file’s last location. The boys downstairs will be able to help.’
Moran was at the back of the elevator and the men stood in front of her facing away. She could see the cop’s face in profile. She recognised the look. He couldn’t care less. His first job of the day was to respond to a request from another police force two thousand miles away. He had to secure a file relating to a company he knew nothing about, relating to a case he knew nothing about. He was warm, dry and about to be given coffee to compensate for being made to wait. He wasn’t going to get too excited about a little admin mix-up. If this took all day, it was fine by him.
The elevator stopped at the second floor and the doors opened.
‘Excuse me,’ Moran said in a tiny voice. The two guys parted and she walked out. She entered the hall to her left, it was the same layout as the one above. She idled between the shelves pretending to locate a file. When she was sure no one was about, she pulled the file from under her coat and slid it amongst the others squeezed between Mountain Press Spirits and Montague Inc. That should take a while to find – barcode system, or no barcode system.
23
The next day Lucas and Harper were having lunch at a bar on a corner in Old Town. The patio was decked out in brightly coloured mosaic tables with gas burners set in the middle, a warm luxury to be enjoyed when the sun went down.
‘Did Jameson give a timescale?’ Harper asked, slurping his margarita and wiping salt from his mouth.
‘He said he would know in a few days. He also said he didn’t know how long the hit would take to plan, it depended on the target and location.’
‘What do we do in the meantime?’
‘This, I suppose.’ Lucas took a mouthful of margarita from his plastic cup. ‘We drink and we wait.’
‘What about the cash?’
‘I have a call with Bassano’s father later today. I’m not anticipating an issue, they are minted and the look on his face at the funeral said “name your price”.’
‘I figure it would be worthwhile keeping the occasional tail on Jameson. And that would be down to me, because he knows you.’
Lucas nodded as he took another gulp.
‘You need a gun,’ Harper said casually, like he was telling his friend to get a haircut.
Lucas grimaced at him over the top of his drink.
‘When the time is right. You know I hate them.’
‘They’re a necessity. You need to get your head around it.’
‘Get my head around it?’ Lucas leaned in close and lowered his voice. ‘That’s rich coming from you. Let’s not forget you shot me.’
‘Not that again, when are you going to give it rest? That was …’ Lucas paused and did some mental arithmetic. He failed. ‘… a long time ago.’
‘Twenty-two months to be precise, which I think you’ll find is not long for people who’ve been shot in the head.’
‘It was an accident, stop whining. I visited you in hospital, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but only so you could feed your face. People brought me fruit and chocolates and you ate them.’
‘That’s horseshit. You whine worse than any wife.’
That stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. Harper looked down at his drink. The reference to wives was a little close to the bone.
‘Sorry, man. I didn’t mean that.’
Lucas smiled and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
‘No you didn’t. You’re a jerk who shot me in the head by accident.’ Lucas held up his plastic cup and Harper struck it with his.
‘Cheers.’
‘I saved your life, didn’t I?’ Harper said.
‘Yes, you did that too.’
They chinked their cups together again as the food arrived.
The extra payment in kind, which almost hospitalised Jameson, must have worked wonders. He had the information Mechanic wanted by mid-morning on his first day back at work.
It was relatively straightforward to locate her father. He was alive and in the advanced stages of liver cancer. He lived in sheltered accommodation in Prescott, Arizona. What the hell he was doing there God only knew. It was exorbitantly expensive and the bulk of his military pension went towards the care bills, which was probably a good thing. If he had all the money to spend on himself, he would have drunk himself to death a long time ago.
After his wife died, he disappeared off grid for several years, which must have been when he decided to kill his liver. By the time he showed up in Prescott, he was well on his way to an early death. To start with he lived in a series of rented properties, until his health deteriorated to the point where he needed the daily attentions of a nurse. His doctor suggested Pavilion Park Homes, a sheltered housing project with care facilities on site. The amount of care you received depended on how much you needed, or that was what it said in the brochure. In reality the amount of care was governed by how much you were willing to pay.
Ex-Lieutenant Commander Stewart Sells had lived at Pavilion Park for three years and needed more care than a fifty-nine-year-old man ever should. He liked the place and had a string of ex-military guys to hang around with, each one damaged in his own way and each one older than him. This was where Stewart Sells planned to spend the last of his days. Arizona suited him, the weather was hot and dry, the liquor was hot and dry, and the women were, well, hot anyway.
He was happy. The only issue was how many days he had left, and every time he attended clinic they told him it was fewer than the time before. If only he would stop drinking and allow the drugs to do their work. But that didn’t figure for him – what was the point if he couldn’t indulge himself from time to time. The problem was that for Stewart Sells indulging himself meant drinking so much he fell down.
He didn’t own a car on account that he was rarely sober enough to drive. On the occasions when he felt the urge to travel, he rented a vehicle from Alamo and drove the one hundred and one miles south on the I-17 to Phoenix. It was a journey of one hour and forty minutes on a good day. But then taking a trip to Phoenix was always a good day because there were far more hookers in the state capital.
Ex-Lieutenant Commander Stewart Sells was happy with his lot in life and didn’t appear o
verly concerned about killing himself.
Mechanic was desperate, she had to do something. The latest psychotic attacks had shaken her to the core. It was strange to think that following the death of her sister the voices had stopped. The prospect of Daddy roaming around in her head again was terrifying.
The San Francisco job was a disaster, despite what Jameson had said. The hit would have been clean and executed with the minimum of fuss had she been functioning normally, if you can call blowing a stranger’s face off normal.
She had to reach some sort of closure with her father. It was the only thing she could think of to silence the voices. She couldn’t go back to the time when Daddy ruled her life, compelling her to destroy families, killing the father and children while leaving the mother barely alive. It was a desperate move for a desperate person, but after the events in San Francisco that word described her well.
Mechanic decided the safest route was to travel by car. Taking flights was always a risk because of her fake I.D. It was the best US military intelligence had to offer, but if there was an alternative method of travel, she would rather not push her luck.
At three hundred and seventy-two miles it was a day’s drive via the I-8 and the I–10 East. There were plenty of places to stop on the way so it shouldn’t be difficult. It was a three-day round trip, maybe four, depending on what she found when she got there.
Mechanic threw a bag in the back of the car and set off for Prescott as the concrete span of the Coronado Bridge was silhouetted against the early morning sun.
24
Mechanic had no idea what to expect when she found her father and even less idea what to say when she did. She hoped the words would come. Words that would enable her to make peace with the man who had blighted her life for so long. The man who had sought solace in raping her when his adulterous wife left him. The man she allowed to abuse her to protect her twin sister Jo as she slept two doors away. The man who chose his drug-taking whore of a wife over his daughters. The man who compelled her to kill.
