Honorable Assassin

by Jason Lord Case

  “Thank you. I do have my moments. Have a look-see. What’s he doing?”

  Terry got out of the van with a scope and slipped around the side of the abandoned church to determine that Demetrius Marlowe was walking back to the steps of the restaurant. He had used the pay phone next to the road and was now waiting for someone. He smoked as he waited.

  As Terry watched a taxi stopped and picked Marlowe up. The sun was coming up. Terry got back in the van. “I think he’s just going home. He called a cab.”

  “Good. As I was saying, people seldom keep secrets, but I think this one has enough sense to know what will happen if he opens his mouth. We have about a week to make a move. Give it a couple of hours and we have some telephone calls to make.”

  Between Five Dock Bay and Drummoyne Bay there were lots of boats. The Bacchus was not berthed at the docks under the Gladesville Bridge, but it was found, a couple of kilometers south, at the docks on Birkenhead Point. It was a handsome vessel, well cared for. The identification numbers were all that was needed to determine the name and address of the owner, using the insurance companies’ program. Terry took care of it from a laptop computer hooked to the telephone line in the motel room. Ginger was amazed at the system. He had fallen behind the times so drastically that he didn’t even know it was possible. Terry jibed at him about not even having a telephone line. Ginger replied that he was certain to never have one now for fear that people would be spying on him through the computers.

  “Yep. Mark Valentine has a policy against this boat with the Ranchers Insurance Company. He opened the policy through the Wallton Agency on Underwood Road in Homebush. He also has a homeowner policy through them for a residence on Cornwall Road in Regents Park. There is no one else on the policies so he is not married, currently. His beneficiary in the event of his death is… Well, well, Randy Arganmajc.”

  “Capital. Will this thing tell me his shoe size as well?”

  “No, Uncle, but it will tell us he drives a 1998 BMW, gold colored and he has not reported an accident with it. He did, however report some damage to the Mercedes he was driving two years ago. It looks like he hit a tree with it. No charges were filed.”

  “License plate number?”

  “PKY 449.”

  “Capital. That’s all we’re going to need. Where is Marlowe’s car?”

  “It looks like it’s been towed to a garage on Youngswood, north end of Rosebery.”

  “Amazing. Things sure have changed.”

  “I’m thinking, Uncle, that we’ve seen nothing yet. The advancements being made are increasing so fast that one man cannot keep up with the progress.”

  Demetrius Marlowe had counted himself very lucky to escape his captors, though he was still not sure what it was they had intended. He had no love for his underworld contacts and only continued with the operations because they had insisted and had too much on him. Privately, he knew they would never turn him in to the police. He was much more likely to be killed and buried in the outskirts of the city or fed to the sharks. He continued making his sales as if nothing had ever happened and after a week he stopped considering every stranger as a potential executioner. He accepted his next shipment and tried not to look too nervous. His problems began at that point. The day after he accepted the shipment of cocaine he was alerted to a break in. The office he stored the drugs in was a small-time retail outlet in a strip mall. It had a security system, which had been tripped by the burglars, but the safe box was nothing more than a fire safe and it had been wheeled out the door and stolen in its entirety, with half a million Australian dollars worth of cocaine inside.

  Bruno Ziegel was the first person to contact Demetrius about the break in who was not a policeman. He got there before the insurance investigator.

  Marlowe had never considered insuring the contents of the store and the safe for the actual cost of replacement. He would have been hard pressed to explain how he could have anything worth that much money in so small a safe.

  Bruno was not interested in the insurance payoff. He was interested in how he was going to get paid the money Marlowe owed him and he was not shy about asking.

  At first, Demetrius offered to give him the deeds to two businesses, legitimate, profitable businesses. Bruno was not interested. His was a cash only business and that was all there was to it. Marlowe assured him that he would pay the money but that he needed some time to amass the capital. He would need to sell some properties and take out some loans. Bruno gave him two weeks to get the money. That was the time frame he would have had the return on the cocaine in. There was no mention of men in executioners’ masks but there was a definite hint of a forthcoming execution if the money was not delivered on time.

  “What’s your take on it, Bruno?” Mark Valentine asked tossing out a half finished Camel.

  “I don’t think he’s trying to fuck us, Mr. Valentine. I think he was stupid enough to let somebody know where his product was and that somebody stole it.”

  “Ok, look, I want everybody on the lookout for somebody trying to unload a little weight or somebody with a big stash that has no reason to have it. Cocaine makes people stupid and whoever stole this from us is exceptionally stupid. When we find our idiot we need to make an example of him. We may need to make an example of Marlowe as well. I’d like you to visit him on the agreed upon date and regardless of what he pays you, break one, no, break both his legs. Do not deliver to him again, ever. He is out of favor. I do expect my return on investment from you or there will be the same sort of repercussions in your bullpen. Have I expressed myself sufficiently?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Valentine. I’ll make sure it happens.”

  “Call me in a couple of weeks. We’ll go sailing.”

  “Oy, Uncle, they really shove this shit up their noses?”

  “They can stick it anywhere they want, I don’t care. What matters is what we do with it.”

  “It’s worth a lot of money, eh?”

  “Can it. We are not drug dealers. This shit is responsible for destroying men’s minds. It makes you happy for a little while and then it sucks your brain out and turns it into chum. The only thing a man is good for after a while is drawing in sharks.”

  “I’d like to try some. So I know what I’m dealing with.” The truth was that Terry had done cocaine a couple of times, and heroin once, but he did not know how Ginger would react.

  “You’re a man, I can’t tell you what to do. I can tell you, if you start doing that shit, we’re done working together.” Terry could not have known it was a hollow threat. The truth was that Ginger was really enjoying the action. He wouldn’t stop frivolously.

  “It’s not worth that.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Stick to beer. The worst it will do is make you fat and stupid.”

  “So who are we going to stick with it?”

  “I can’t say, yet. I think we got away clean. I’ll wake you about two in the morning. I think we need to get another big dog to protect the place but until we do, we need to keep on the alert. If we made any mistakes, they’ll be coming for us.”

  “Right-o. I’ll get some tucker and sleep early. Oh, when are we going to get the tracker back?” Terry asked opening the refrigerator.

  “I think we need another one. I don’t want to go anywhere near Mr. Marlowe for a while. He may well be found in the trunk of that fancy German car.”

  “No worries, I took the identifying numbers off the tracker.”

  “I don’t know if they can track it back by the signal.”

  “Not if I don’t access it. Hey, what about this cheap safe?”

  “Oh, we can use that as well. We just make sure the proper people find it.”

  “Right. Beer?”

  “No, and I would appreciate it if you don’t drink while on watch. If we are going to do this, we do it right, or we die.”

  “Well, I’ll have one with supper and then turn in.”

  “Two days.”

  “Eh?”
r />   “Two days and we go to the suburbs and find a willing victim. Someone who deserves what he gets.”

  Two days later they contacted the eldest son of Beth and Jerry Cuthbert and told him to take care of the place for a couple of days. Jerry Junior was more than happy to since the pay was good and the work was easy.

  With all the factories in Blacktown, there was a good smattering of taverns but the clientele were all of the older, stodgier variety. Their first choice was a poor one. They had more luck near the airport, in the Quakers Hill area. They found a club that catered to the younger crowd and observed it for a while, after dark. It wasn’t the sort of place where a line formed at the door and you only got in if you were pretty enough or cool enough. It was a coke den. The windows were covered well enough that one could not see in from a car. One of them would need to go in and Ginger was too old. His appearance would send up red flags. It had to be Terry and he would need to certify himself as one of the crowd. In most places buying people drinks qualified you, but not here. Here you needed to be passing around the cocaine and snorting it yourself. Terry looked the part but his experience was almost nonexistent and with Ginger watching he did not want to slip up.

  Sitting on a bar stool with a draught, Terry watched and listened. The music was loud and the crowd was lively. They were drinking and dancing and passing around cylinders that dispensed a little snort or they used little spoons. Many of the men had grown the fingernail on one little finger long and used them as a spoon for snorting. Everybody in the place was doing it and it did not take long before someone offered Terry some. He refused and told the man he was sticking to beer. It got him a funny look and then more funny looks. It was obvious that he was in the right place but unless he joined in their brand of celebration he would be marked as a narcotics agent. The funny looks became more obvious and a dead zone formed around him. He finished his second beer and left.

  “Look, I felt like those blokes were going to lynch me. I can’t stay in a place like that without blending better and without doing what they are doing I can’t blend,” he told his uncle.

  “We’ve had this conversation.”

  “Well then, we need to look some other way. It’s not worth a row with you, and I need you for this. Let’s drive off.”

  “All right. We’re being watched now. They marked us. We need to try a different club. Let’s try something off a ways.”

  They knew Liverpool would be a wash as soon as they saw Cowpasture Road. They got a laugh from it and headed downtown to the Annandale area instead. This was a hotbed of activity. Scantily clad women and well-dressed men partook of a variety of illegal substances openly. The clubs were hopping.

  The ruse was simple. Terry pretended to be very drunk. He saw the man with the diamond rings, the one people deferred to. He stumbled into the man on the way to the bathroom and dropped a very large bag of cocaine on the floor as he did. The man said nothing, just pocketed his incredible good fortune. It worked smoothly and Terry stumbled out the door unidentified and unnoticed. There was no need to make friends and no reason to blend.

  The heavily stoned victim did not notice that he was followed when he left the club 20 minutes later. He went home to secure his prize. When he woke in the morning, he did not see the fire safe, which had been cut through the back, sitting in his back yard.

  Mark Valentine had been at Victor’s the night before. He found a message on his answering machine when he arrived home. It told him that “the Irishman” had stolen Demetrius’ “item” and sold it to the man at this address. Mark made some calls and arranged to have a crew meet him in the morning.

  Four men got out of the 1987 Lincoln Town Car in front of the house on Denman Avenue. It was very early in the morning and three of the four men were hung over to some degree. The fourth man did not drink; he got his pleasure from less socially acceptable means.

  Two men went to the front door and two moved to the back. The doorbell worked and was quite loud, bringing to owner of the house to the front door. The two men in front pushed their way in and knocked the owner to the floor. The back door was opened and the two men from the back yard pointed out, as they entered, that there was a safe in the back yard with a hole cut in the back.

  The man who was not hung over was then employed in his favorite form of recreation: torture and mutilation.

  Two blocks down the street Terry Kingston wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was not the temperature that caused him to perspire. He had seen the men enter the house and he had developed a pain in his stomach. He had not considered that there might be innocent victims in the house that would suffer the wrath of Mark Valentine. The intended victim had been alone in the club. It was not until after he returned to his home that the question of collateral damage had reared its ugly head. He might well have a wife and children in there that would not survive the interrogation.

  It was too late to change the plan now, and it was too late to walk away. The dice had been rolled.

  Inside, the victim was already in horrible shape. Valentine had instructed his mechanic to “soften him up” and that man had gone to work ruthlessly. The other three were in the kitchen having breakfast. There was nobody else in the house. They could not have known but their target’s wife had taken the children and left three months earlier because of domestic violence issues.

  Mark Valentine pulled his gloves back on after breakfast, and instructed a man to clean all the prints up. The owner of the house looked like he had been softened up the way a cube steak is softened up. He was babbling uncontrollably, pleading for his life. The story that he stuck to until the bitter end, was that he had picked up what someone else had dropped. He had not known the man and did not know where the safe came from. He disavowed all knowledge of “The Irishman.” Of course, his breakfast guests did not believe him. Once they determined they could not get the correct information from him, he became a liability and his throat was cut. He bled to death in his own living room, secured to a chair with baling wire.

  Terry’s hands were sweating as he saw the door begin to open. He was sitting on a wooden box between the front seats of the van. It gave him the correct height to rest the barrel of the Mauser on the lip of the window. The SP66 fired a .308 round, held one in the chamber and three in the magazine. The scope had already been sighted in. The van was parked close to the corner with clear access right across the front lawn of the corner house.

  Terry wiped his right hand on his denim work pants. There was a ringing in his ears and he worked his jaw to equalize the pressure. Unbidden the old tune came into his head. “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree.” The men had reached the street. “Merry, merry king of the bush is he.” The Mauser barked and one man dropped. “Rack, rack, sight. Laugh.” The Mauser barked again and second man dropped as those remaining headed for cover behind the Lincoln. “Laugh kookaburra, laugh kookaburra, gay your life must be.” The third shell smashed through the Lincoln’s radiator, destroyed the cooling fan and cracked the water pump.

  Terry set the rifle in the back of the van and started the engine. The two remaining gangsters had opened fire with their pistols but they did not know what they were shooting at so the neighbor’s automobiles suffered some broken glass and bullet holes, but the van was not struck. Looking over the rim of the window, Terry saw his uncle coming up behind the two men, with a shotgun. One of them turned around but never got off a shot. Ginger tore him in half with buckshot and then shot Mark Valentine. He had tried to shoot Valentine in the arm and leave the man alive but the buckshot was too efficient at that range. The man was dead before he hit the ground.

  As Terry drove up to the carnage he saw his uncle pull a .32 revolver and systematically shoot each corpse in the head. It was a vision he never forgot. It was not so much the fact that he did it; it was the cold and machinelike efficiency with which he did it.

  Ginger got in the van and the two drove off without a word. Ginger was reloading his pistol and Terry was humming the ko
okaburra song. The petrol tank was full and the pair did not need to stop until they got to Orange where they swapped out the van for the Holden and went to breakfast at a local diner. In the diner they acted as normal as could be possible. After breakfast they sat on a railing by the road and smoked. Terry was curious how his uncle could be so calm.

  “It’s not that I’m calm. I just look calm. Most of what you see is what you want to see. You look calm as a clam and that’s what you want everyone else to see.”

  “I’m shaking inside, like I had an electric wire running through my chest and somebody is turning on the power from time to time.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. What do you say we get a dog? You know, a guard dog? Today.”

  “Yep. That’s a good idea. A puppy, so we can train it?”

  “No. We go to the pound and get the meanest, nastiest, snarling piece of junkyard monster in the place. Muzzle him and take him home with us. I don’t care if he hates me, as long as he hates everybody else as well.”

  Terry stopped in at the office for a few minutes, just to check on things and access the news. The police were counting the slaughter on Denman Avenue as a drug deal gone wrong. They had no suspects.

  The pound at Orange did not have what they were looking for, and Clergate did not have a pound but they found what they needed in Mullion Creek. Mullion Creek had a lot of horses, and dogs that chased horses were usually shot on sight. This dog actually liked horses, however, it hated people. It had been dropped off by someone, or had escaped and migrated to this area. When Ginger asked about a dog pound he was told there was none, but if he could capture the mastiff running around with the horses, he could have it. They would have shot the dog if it chased the horses but it did not. It actually seemed to think its job was to guard the horses. It was half the size of a horse anyway. The rancher would have kept it but for the fact that it wouldn’t allow anyone near the herd.