by Mark Dawson
“Where’s the guard?”
“In the restroom,” the man said, as calmly as if he had just described the weather.
He didn’t elaborate; he didn’t need to.
Beau decided to play it dumb. “What do you want?”
“You were working with Señor Russo.”
“Say what?”
“Señor Russo and his children—Jessica and Mason. What was your relationship with them?”
“Don’t know those names.”
“I think you do. Detective Shepherd told me that you and another man—a man who spoke with an English accent—were involved with the Russos, and that the two of you shot Oscar Delgado and his men during an exchange in the desert.”
“Delgado? Don’t know that name, neither.”
“You would say that, Señor Baxter. But one of Señor Delgado’s men survived—a man called Sacca. I spoke with both him and Detective Shepherd before I came here. The detective told me that she showed Sacca your picture, and he identified you. So, please, it would be much better if you did not waste my time. Let me ask you again—how did you come to work for the Russos?”
Beau thought of the button that he used to call the nurses. It was tethered to the rail of the bed.
“No,” the man said, noticing the dart of Beau’s eyes. “That would not be a good idea.”
Beau put the thought of using the button to one side. He wouldn’t be able to reach it before the man could fire; even if he had been able to reach it, he knew it wouldn’t do him much good.
“Señor Baxter—please. Answer my question.”
“Buddy, I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know anything about the girl, and I certainly don’t know anything about some shooting in the desert. I ain’t got nothing for you.”
“What about the Englishman?”
“I don’t know no Englishman. I don’t know no one from England. I was down here looking for a bail skipper, and then this whole mess happened around me. I work alone. I was alone in the car when it happened. That’s it.”
“Where do you think the Russos have gone?”
“I just told you—I don’t know no one called Russo.”
“Your last chance, señor.”
“I ain’t got nothing for you.”
Was there a flicker of something across the man’s face? Satisfaction, perhaps. He took a step back and—before Beau could protest or react or do anything that might have helped his situation—pulled the trigger. The first shot hit Beau in the chest, punching into his heart, blowing out of his back and into the mattress.
The second shot, aimed with languid ease, was into his head.
74
Milton stayed at the airport all afternoon. There were no direct flights to Florence, but the Russos could have chosen to fly out from any of the main hubs. His phone ran out of charge just after two, and he changed his observation point to a bench near security where he could plug the phone in for more juice.
He allowed his thoughts to wander a little. If the Russos had already left the country, then at least he had a very good idea where they would go. The Nevada police would be able to request assistance from their foreign colleagues; if they could find them, perhaps it would be possible to begin the process to extradite them back to the States.
He pressed the button to turn on the phone. It immediately buzzed with inbound notifications.
He picked it up and saw that he had missed calls from Louis Salazar.
Ten of them.
His stomach dropped. He dialled Salazar’s number.
“At last,” Salazar said as soon as the call connected. “Where’ve you been?”
“My phone died.”
“Beau’s dead.”
Milton felt sick. “What?”
“He’s been shot. The guard we had on the door—shot, too.”
“Oh no.”
“It’s worse than that,” Salazar said. “My partner was found dead in Maximilliano Sacca’s room. Sacca was shot, too, and the doctor who was looking after him. Looks like the same gun was used to kill all five of them—we’ll know for sure when the ballistics are checked. It looks like the killer took out Sacca and Shepherd first, then crossed town for Beau.”
Milton’s head was spinning. “It can’t be the Russos.”
“It isn’t. A Denali Yukon matching the one you said you were driving was found in a parking lot at a mall in Crystal Springs. We’ve got security camera footage from the mall showing the three of them leaving the car on foot two hours ago. So it couldn’t have been them.”
“You have CCTV from the hospitals?”
“We’re looking.”
Milton gripped the phone tightly.
“You still there?” Salazar said.
“I’m here.”
“It’s a shitstorm. The press are on to it. You got a murdered detective, a murdered gangster, a murdered doctor and two murdered civilians. Five homicides, plus the three from last night.”
“It’s the cartel,” Milton said. “They’ve sent someone to find the money.”
“But the money’s not here.”
“And whoever it is that they’ve sent, he’ll know that by now.”
Milton closed his eyes and thought. He needed to piece this together.
“Did your partner know about Beau?”
“I think so. I’d just been with her when she spoke to him. She waited until I was gone and went back. Maybe she suspected something and didn’t want me around when she asked because she knows I knew Beau.”
“She must have known,” Milton said. “The killer couldn’t have known about Beau unless she told him.”
“Or Sacca.”
“Either one could have told him,” Milton conceded. He squeezed his eyes closed tighter. “He finds out about Beau, kills them and then goes across town. He questions Beau. So he knows about me now.”
“Beau was tough.”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone talks. It’s biology.”
“Okay. He knows.”
“He’s trying to work out what happened in the desert. He’ll know about the Russos by now—someone would’ve told him. He’ll be after them.” Milton paused. “Did your partner know about Russo’s place in Italy?”
“Yes. She told me.”
“So the killer knows about that, too.”
“What next? We can’t let that motherfucker get away with what he’s done.”
Milton stood up. “We’re not going to.”
“So?”
“He’ll go to Italy. He’ll find the property and wait for the Russos to show.”
Milton started towards the airline ticket desks.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going there, too,” Milton said.
75
Jessica got out of the car and stretched, trying to work out the kinks that had accumulated over the course of the long journey north. They were all exhausted. They had covered the twelve hundred miles between Las Vegas and Vancouver in twenty-one hours. They had stopped in Crystal Springs to change cars, but, since then, they had paused only to use the restroom, refuel and change drivers. Mason had driven the first leg before Jessica had taken over just outside Twin Falls. She had taken them up to Baker City, and then, after sleeping for much of the journey, their father had insisted that he was fit enough to take his turn. He had delivered them to Blaine, and Mason had taken over again for the trip across the border to White Rock and then the final run to Vancouver International Airport.
The first few hours, while they were still within easy distance of Las Vegas, had been the worst. Jessica had looked back often, half expecting to see the strobe of police lights prickling the darkness behind them. Her fearful thoughts had then turned to Smith when the police lights did not appear: would he come after them? It was panicked thinking, she told herself. Smith and Baxter had been left in the middle of the desert, and Smith’s focus would have been on getting Baxter to the hospital before he bled out. Even assuming that
he was prepared to involve the police—and she doubted that, given his involvement in what had happened behind the gas station—she and her father and brother still had a significant head start on any pursuers.
Of course, anyone who wanted to give chase would have had to know where they were and where they were going. Their father assured them that he had not mentioned their destination to Delgado, and, even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered: Delgado was dead. They had decided that they could still travel to Italy, but, just to be safe, they would change their route. They would eschew the tickets out of San Diego that Jessica had bought and, instead, would take the longer—but safer—trip north.
Crossing the border had been big. It had been a relief to get out of the country, and it would be an even bigger relief to leave the continent. The next leg of their journey was the 00.05 Air Canada flight to Montreal, where they would lay over for nine hours before connecting onto the 16.50 flight to Zurich. They would have a further short layover in Switzerland before the final Swissair flight to Florence. They would be travelling for another seventeen hours before they reached the safety of their final destination.
Mason helped their father out of the car.
“Halfway there,” he said.
He looked tired and fragile. She didn’t know how much of that was the cancer and how much was just his age, but she was pleased to have him back again. Delgado had treated him roughly, but, even so, it could have been worse. They didn’t know how long he had left, but he had always wanted to live in the Tuscan hills. Now, at least for a few months, that was what he would do.
They were travelling light; her luggage was in her Tesla, and Mason’s and her father’s were still in the house back in Vegas. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if they were short of cash. Mason took out their passports and handed them around.
Their father straightened up and put out his chest. “Ready?”
Jessica and Mason said that they were.
“Let’s get out of here.”
They made their way into the terminal. She felt a twist of nervousness in her stomach, and although she tried to keep it off her face, her father noticed.
“There’s no reason why they would be looking for us here.”
“I know,” she said.
They made their way into the departures hall and followed the signs to the desk for Air Canada. Jessica had purchased three one-way business-class tickets on her phone and there was no line at the check-in. The attendant welcomed them with a smile that was surely reserved for the airline’s more affluent customers, and quickly ran through the procedure. They said that they had no luggage to check and, once their passports had been checked and their seats had been assigned, they made their way to security.
Jessica couldn’t help but look around as they waited to go through the scanner. The other passengers were nondescript, and she saw nothing that would lead her to think that anyone was observing them. She found, to her surprise, that it was Smith to whom her thoughts returned. He had been good to her and she had betrayed him. She could live with that; his assistance had been helpful in collecting the money and rescuing her father. He had served his purpose. But she found it difficult to forget the way in which he had conducted himself. It was more than just his obvious competence; he knew his business and perhaps he would know how to find them.
“Madam?”
She looked up. Mason and her father were waiting for her on the other side of the arch, and the guard was beckoning her forward. She stepped through and was pleased not to set off the device. On the other side, she pocketed the coins that she had deposited in the tray and went to her father’s side. He offered her his arm and she took it.
“Shall we?” he said.
She smiled at him. “Let’s.”
Part IV
76
Milton had been lucky. He had managed to book a Lufthansa flight from San Diego to Frankfurt that departed within two hours of his enquiry at the desk. He had an hour’s layover in Germany before the connecting flight to Florence, and he had spent that time making a telephone call to a contact to ask for his help. He had a plan to deal with the Russos, but there were certain technical elements that were beyond him, and Ziggy Penn—a man who had worked as an analyst for the Group at the same time that Milton had been deployed—had been able to assist, especially when Milton promised to pay him for his time.
The Air Dolomiti Embraer ERJ-195 started its descent into Florence and Milton allowed himself to think—again—about the events that he had left behind him. A riot of thoughts ran through his head. There was no shock at the thought of death, since death had been a constant presence in his life for two decades, and familiarity had inured him to its sting. Instead, there was confusion and dismay and anger.
There was self-recrimination there, too, the first stirrings of blame: Beau had no business in Milton’s affairs and had only involved himself in the Russo business at Milton’s request. Beau had done him a favour—another one, again—and now, because of that, he was dead. Milton knew himself well enough to know where he would point the finger of blame, and that he needed to get to a meeting quickly if he wanted to resist the demon that was already beginning to stir. Vegas had been a challenge to his sobriety before this, but if his self-loathing was allowed to stir and flourish… he knew where that would end up.
“Could you open your blind, please, sir?” the attendant asked. “We’ll be landing shortly.”
“Sorry,” Milton said. “Of course.”
She smiled an automatic smile and continued back along the aisle. Milton pushed the blind up and looked down at the verdant green hills that swaddled the city ahead of them. Florence. He had been here before, years earlier, and for once it had been for pleasure and not for business. He had brought a girlfriend here to see the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery and to eat the ribollita and penne strascicate and the gelato. It had been a magical visit, and he had retained fond memories of it ever since.
This, though, was not pleasure.
This was business.
Milton descended the steps to the asphalt and made his way around the wing to a waiting bus. He pushed inside, fighting for space with the other several dozen passengers who had no patience to wait for the next one to arrive. The driver put the bus into gear and moved forward perhaps a hundred metres, then hit the brakes and opened the doors. Everyone disembarked, a few sharing a joke about how idiotic the need for the bus was given the distance between the jet and the terminal. Milton followed the crowd into the baggage reclaim. He had no luggage save a small pack that he had purchased in San Diego, so he bypassed the renewed scrum at the mini-carousels and made his way through immigration and into the arrivals hall.
He changed six hundred dollars into euros, put the notes into his pack and went to the Autoeurope desk. He rented a car and headed south. The airport was on the autostrada and the traffic was light. His satnav indicated that there were seventy-six kilometres between here and Siena, and that he would arrive in an hour and twenty minutes.
He decided that he had time to make a short stop. He pulled off the road and stocked up on food from the first Autogrill he passed: he bought several pastries and sandwiches together with a spremuta, the juice of four blood oranges that was squeezed into a tall glass.
He reached Siena in good time and left the car in a lot on the edge of town. He took out his phone and searched for the nearest store that sold camping equipment and outdoor gear. It was on Casato di Sotto. He found his way there and went inside. The store was small, but had a good range of equipment. Milton walked the aisles, selecting the things he thought he might need if he was forced to stay outdoors for a reasonable length of time. He selected a small one-man tent, together with the associated accessories. He added a sleeping bag, a flashlight, a hunting knife with a sheath that could be fixed to his belt, a water container and a selection of ready-to-eat meals. Finally, he took waterproof matches, a bag of cable ties, a candle, a flint, a compass, a pair of binoculars and
a simple medical kit including an analgesic, Imodium, an antibiotic, antihistamine, water purification tablets, a can of bug repellent and potassium permanganate. He chose a rucksack that was large enough to carry everything and went to the counter. He paid cash and took the equipment outside.
He would have liked to have spent an hour or two wandering the cobbled streets, but he didn’t have the time to spare. He slung the rucksack onto his back and hauled it back to the car.
He continued south. He felt underprepared, with no firearm and no real prospect of finding one. But he had formulated a plan during the flight and was anxious to put it into action. He had very little to go on, and didn’t even know whether the Russos would come here. He was as confident as he could be that they would—and had no idea where else they would go if it wasn’t here—but had no clue as to whether they might have already arrived or whether he might have beaten them.
He also did not know whether they would be alone.
He needed to check the house out as quickly as he could.
77
Milton drove into San Quirico d’Orcia. It was a small town in the Val d’Orcia. It was arranged around its church, the Collegiata, which was decorated with sculptures and with weather-beaten lions guarding the entrance. Milton found a place to leave the car and took out the map he had purchased of the area. He found and marked the Russo property on the map and then took his bearings. The farmhouse was a five-mile hike to the south.
