Honorable Assassin

by Jason Lord Case

  “You don’t suppose they did away with her, do you?”

  “Sergeant, they may have done anything with her. It is out of character for a farm girl and secretary of an insurance agency to suddenly up and run off with a bunch of bisexual bikies. It doesn’t fit, unless she took a sudden liking to women. Women in black leather.”

  Sergeant Black had a sudden intuition, fed by the expression on her face, that perhaps Senior Constable First Class O’Reilly had taken a sudden liking to women in black leather, but he held his tongue.

  “They could have started pimping her out, but that is not what they do as far as anyone can tell” O’Reilly continued. “They may have used her up and eaten her alive for all I could tell. The men in Orange kept a sharp eye on them in and out of town. They saw a woman in business attire riding with one of the gang, but did not see who it was. I’m convinced it was this Linda Pettigrew, but I can’t say where she went.”

  “Very well, Constable O’Reilly, I’ll make sure the Superintendent knows of your invaluable assistance.” The truth was he was desperate to prove how valuable he could be. Black knew the Superintendent had only a few years at the best and would be replaced with someone who had no knowledge of him or love for him. If he were to make a mark, he needed to move soon, while his star was still on the horizon. At this juncture that meant finding Linda and bringing her to talk to Barlow. But he had no clue where to look. Finally he concluded that his best chance of finding Linda lay with observing Terry Kingston. Terry was the key to it all.

  “Did ye bring me a cigar, mate?”

  Terry jumped out of his skin. Before he knew it he had a .38 out and cocked.

  “Oh, oh, oh. Terry, you wouldn’t shoot your old uncle would you?”

  “Ginger, for the love of God. You scared me right out of my trousers.”

  “Only two kinds of men coming through that door, friends and enemies and I don’t have many friends.”

  “So you hide under a blanket and scare the life out of one of the few you do have?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Shit, how did you expect to get out of here? How did you close the slab behind you?”

  “House jack and a bit of timber. This is a bloody good place to hide.”

  “For a while.” Terry did not look entirely convinced.

  “You have fresh air, bottled water, food. I wouldn’t want to stay down here long but a couple of days is no strain.”

  “You’re dead, you know. I identified your dead body at the morgue.” Terry lit a cigarette.

  “I’ll thank you to address me as Horace in the future. I needed a change anyway.”

  Terry grinned. “Uncle Horace. Sounds like some child-boffing pervert from a wizard book.”

  “Have a care young man. This old pervert might boff your ears for you.”

  Terry spread his arms and hugged his uncle in an unprecedented rush of emotion. Ginger thumped him on the back and asked if there was a chance of getting out quietly and if Terry had any cigars.

  There was no doubt about the Helping Hands cutting Terry a check for the disastrous fire and the death of his uncle. There was actually a substantial life insurance policy that both Kingstons had forgotten about. It was paid automatically and in perpetuity by Mr. Streng, Esquire, in Terry’s name. Mr. Streng made a small percentage for representing the interested parties, and a much larger commission for selling the Kingston Agency that was snapped up within days of going on the market. It should have sold for more, but time was of the essence.

  Ginger could not be convinced to leave the area with a pile of cash. He had not raised and trained his nephew in the clandestine arts just to be shoved under the bed when the action started. He was already dead in the eyes of the law and the bastards had burned his home, so he felt he had a legitimate grudge.

  When Ginger heard that the three men who had survived the assault on his farm had been kidnapped from the Pettigrew farm, and were locked in the back of a panel truck behind the Dark Knight’s clubhouse, he was all for eliminating them. Terry thought they might be more useful alive. Ginger agreed that one might be useful, left alive, but three were unnecessary. Terry argued that there was no percentage in killing them without some sort of return on investment. Ginger accused Terry of becoming greedy and Terry said he was just being practical. It turned out to be a dead issue since a couple of days in the back of the truck without water had killed all three of them from dehydration. The bodies disappeared without fanfare or funeral.

  Evan was taking care of Linda in a house outside the city. She shared the house with another woman and there were assigned guards all night and all day. They were not professional, walk-the-perimeter kind of guards but they would not allow any harm to come to their charge.

  Ginger Kingston and Gordon MacMaster got along in fine order after a few minutes of uneasiness. They recognized a kindred spirit in each other and neither of them were supposed to be there. They spent a day smoking cigars and drinking rum while Terry was coordinating with the Dark Knights. Neither Evan McCormick nor Gordon MacMaster wanted to meet the other and this made for a difficult arrangement. Evan spared no breath in reminding Terry that he already owed him a favor. The corpses of the wise guys served as a strong marker against Terry’s credit. Terry was quick to point out that he was working toward handing control of the city’s underworld over to the club’s president. Evan was chosen as successor to the Troy brothers. He would be the next ruler of the underground empire.

  Evan was not convinced. He had not seen enough positive progress against the main target. The targets chosen had been fringe targets or competition. It was true that the Dark Knights now had control of both the Russian and Chinatown areas, but Evan was also realistic about his ability to hold said control. The Asians were already trying to work around their new suppliers and creating new pathways for their products. Too proud, individual and independent, they would be good for some short-term customers, but to try to control them for the long run would result in a great deal of blood shed.

  Terry had not been on the inside for a couple of days and would never be in again. This meant that he was not privy to the information he needed to plan further coups against the criminal network. It was all or nothing now. There was no more standing on the sidelines and sniping easy targets. The spigot was closed and to access the flow, it needed to be chopped off.

  Jimmy Cognac was the first target needing a fast decommission. Most of the men under him needed direction from a superior. They were not leaders; they were very dangerous men, but they needed direction. The one problem with killing Jimmy was finding him. Jimmy had lived in the world of corruption and betrayal his whole life and was nobody’s fool. He had no long lasting habits, no pattern of associates or locations that he favored. He did visit the Kings Cross section about once a week but changed houses almost every time, preferring the anonymity of prostitutes. He had no permanent position, no legitimate business that was a running concern and required monitoring. He showed up at warehouses when and where he felt like and kept a low profile as far as clubs and pubs were concerned.

  Terry could send Jimmy Cognac a message to meet him somewhere but Jimmy would show up with an army of wise guys and might not even be there in person. Jimmy would never consent to a meeting with any of the motorcycle gangs, either, unless he picked the location and secured it. Gordon was supposed to be gone from Australia and he intended to maintain this subterfuge until the end. And Ginger was dead.

  Terry finally admitted that he did not know where to proceed from there. If he had done it earlier, when he was an unknown quantity, when he was an unrecognizable hick farmer, he might have gotten away with it. He had been around too long now. His face was too well known by too many people.

  Gordon and Ginger were half in the bag and Gordon was talking about things he did not usually discuss, things he had done in the past. It had been a long time since he had consorted with men that had done what he did for a living, even if it had been a long time ago. They
were so engaged with their own conversation that they actually alienated Terry. They were too drunk to conceive of a good plan anyway.

  The next day over breakfast they looked at the situation again.

  “Why do we need to eliminate Jimmy Cognac, anyway?” MacMaster wanted to know.

  “Well, he’s next in line for the uh… position,” Terry said.

  “No, not really. The way the thing is set up, no one is in line for the position. Whoever is listed on the wills of these two men, the Troys, that is who is in line. Remember, as despicable as they are, most of their business is legitimate. They have reinvested the dirty money over the years and built themselves a clean organization.”

  “It’s not that part of the business that we’re attacking. I mean we haven't attacked it. Cognac represents the other side of the road. You bring up an interesting point, though. I wonder who is actually going to benefit from this. Neither of the brothers has a wife or any children. Blast! If I hadn’t sold the agency I could probably figure it out.”

  “It’s not public record, is it?” Ginger asked.

  “No,” said Terry. “Not till after the will has been executed.”

  “Who executes the will?” Ginger asked.

  “The lawyers do that. Why?

  “If we know who their heir is, it gives us leverage.”

  “What sort of leverage? What? Are we going to kidnap whoever is on the document? That makes the whole thing much more complicated than it needs to be, Uncle. It was that sort of complication that almost cost you your life. I was ready to shoot the bastards through the window of the limo.”

  “Yes, but think of all you would not have learned, had you done that.” Ginger was examining his half-burned, unlit cigar as he spoke.

  “But you would still have a home and I would not be on the run.”

  “I told you this life is not for those seeking stability. You must be ready to make the move in a heartbeat. No ties.”

  “My father managed a family and a business while living this life.”

  “Your father tried to have both sides and it killed him.” Ginger’s voice was harsh and his visage became very cold. “Now, let’s figure out how we finish this up and get out of here.”

  Terry’s nostrils flared at his uncle’s coarse treatment of what was still a tender subject but he kept his tongue. He knew Ginger was right, recent events had proven it. The life of an assassin was an anathema to stability and the thought that the two could coexist was the height of self-delusion. The young man had not known how much he was going to miss having a home to go back to from time to time.

  Gordon MacMaster watched this interaction very closely as he was making a show of eating his eggs and toast. The slightest friction can cause hesitation or heat that cannot be justified in a combat situation. He saw that Terry’s father had become a sore point but also wondered who the father had been. His name would have meant nothing to him, since he had never worked the Australian continent before, but it was becoming clear that there was more to this family than he knew and that there were secrets that they were very good at keeping. In all the time they had been together, and all the drinking they had done, Terry had never told him about his father having been in the business. That sort of self-control was an admirable trait. It increased the respect Gordon felt for his potential protégé. He knew it was not important in the short run, but his curiosity was piqued. Gordon MacMaster simply had to know who the father had been and what he had done.

  One thing Gordon had discovered, and was to remain relatively certain of, was that drug addicts, gangsters, wise guys and bikies were seldom found in the library. He had used libraries as meeting places on a number of occasions in the past and was, in fact, a very well read individual. The internet was becoming a huge source of information on current events, but much of the older news was never scanned in and was only available on microfilm.

  Leaving Terry and Ginger in the hotel room under the guise of “reconnoitering,” Gordon visited one of the larger local branches of the library. He researched the Kingston name and found out about the murder of Marcia, the disappearance of George and the shooting of Ginger Kingston in the hospital in Goulburn. There was no link between the family and any assassinations that may or may not have been perpetrated. If George Kingston had been a killer for hire he covered it very well. The reason for Terry’s personal vendetta was uncovered, however.

  Gordon MacMaster ruminated on the methods and patience that Terry Kingston had displayed. He had not gone hog wild and started blasting away at everything, even before the Scotsman had begun to coach him. He had displayed some style, though not much, and some skill, certainly. More than that, he had displayed the commitment to the long-term objective necessary of a professional, and he had been able to swallow his feelings and act as one of the men he was trying to destroy. MacMaster decided then that there was sufficient justification for his long-term association, rather than just a fast pile of cash. To this point he could not decide if he should disappear at the end of the job or not. He had never wanted an apprentice because of the inherent risks involved. He had known many competent men in his life but did not know of one he would have consorted with after the job was done. Until this point, regardless of what he said, Gordon had been unsure of whether or not he was going to eliminate the young Australian at some point in the future. Now he knew.

  “Do you mean to tell us that four men could do nothing about a farm boy and his sheila? That all four men just disappeared?” Abel Troy was not his usual erudite self. It seemed as though he was becoming slightly unraveled.

  “Mr. Troy, sir, as far as I can determine, the three men who survived the encounter at the Kingston Farm were kidnapped by bikies at the Pettigrew Farm.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “It may seem so, sir, but nevertheless, true. When they went into the house looking for this Terry Kingston, they opened fire on a man and caused an explosion. That explosion took one of them down and burned the house and anyone in it. They called to tell me about that. Then they went to the Pettigrew farm, thinking he would go there if they manipulated the woman. That blew up in their faces as well, so to speak and nobody has heard from them since.”

  “What gang?”

  “Valkieries.”

  “Do we know where they are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hit them. Hit them hard and fast. Kill everyone there and if this son-of-a-bitch is there with them, bring me his head.”

  “Are you sure you want to commit the manpower necessary to…”

  “You stupid little worm! Did I ask your feedback on this? Did I tell you to question my judgment? Did I give you a fucking order? I’m not giving you permission to hide under a rock. Get onto the fucking job and bring me this little cock suckers head on a fucking plate.” Abel Troy was becoming unhinged at this point. Spittle was flying from his mouth as he screamed. A dispassionate observer might have labeled him as having gone over the edge.

  Jimmy Cognac headed for the door with a stream of invective pouring after him. He thought it was a bad idea to go to war, especially now, but he had been given no choice. He began gathering the troops oblivious to the fact that he was being observed as he did so. He knew he was making a mistake, he could feel it, but he dared not go against orders. He had worked for the Troys for a long time and had never seen either of them lose their composure before.

  “Mr. Troy, Adam, I need to talk to you.”

  “Jimmy, what is it now?”

  “Adam, I’ve worked for you for a long time and in all that time I have never refused to do anything for you. Sir, do you trust my judgment?”

  “It has proven to be sound on some occasions.”

  “Then, please, do not allow this action to go on.”

  “What action?”

  “The assault on the Valkierie clubhouse in hopes of finding Terry Kingston there.”

  “What are you talking about? Who authorized that?”

  “Your brother, Abel.”<
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  “Oh, no. Stand down. I repeat, stand down. I need to examine this in depth before we go expending manpower on what could be nothing more than a snipe hunt.”

  “Thank you, sir. You have no idea how relieved I am. If they had the slightest hint we were coming, we would never have left.”

  “Why?”

  “The Valkieries’ clubhouse is the old Airie Hotel set into the end wall of a box canyon. One way in, covered on both sides from above. Passage is narrow enough to block with a car and we’re ducks in a barrel. We’d never see the far side of that scrap.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Warehouse on Irving. I didn’t want to bring this to you, but it’s the very worst thing we could do. I know the two of you back each other up on all things but this was so far over the edge that I…”

  “Don’t be alarmed. I will talk with Abel about it and determine if his motivation was sufficient for the risk involved.”

  “Thank you again, sir. If we are to do this it will require planning and coordination of a sort I do not have the capacity for without maps and photos. We cannot go into that canyon without a way out.” As Jimmy Cognac hung up he heard the first of the sirens approaching. He stepped out on the floor of the warehouse and addressed the crowd, telling them to stay where they were, that they were not going on an excursion after all and to remain calm. The sirens stopped right outside the personnel door.

  A few miles off, Adam was on the telephone with his brother. Abel had calmed down after his little flare up and they spoke civilly to each other. Their conversations had been a bit strained of late since Abel was a strong advocate of paramilitary tactics and Adam much preferred a surgical strike. The Troy brothers had ruled the city for a long time after their initial takeover without a serious challenge from any sector and had expanded operations quickly. Their methods were dissimilar, but they balanced each other well.