by Rob Ashman
Although for Mechanic everything was far from fine.
It didn’t seem to occur to the police that both vehicles were stolen the day before, that is the day before Harry Silverton arrived in Vegas. It never occurred to them that the men who attacked them had to be lucky sons of bitches to be waiting at that precise street, at that precise time. And why did the shooters only have eyes for Mechanic and completely ignore Silverton who, after all, was the man with the money?
This situation was far from fine.
It was 11.30am when Mechanic got back to the hotel. She ran a deep bath and soaked away her aches and pains, surrounded by the best soft white towels and toiletries the Hacienda had to offer. Her neck hurt and she had a sizeable bruise on the right side of her head. Fortunately, it was beneath her hairline so didn’t show, but she was constantly aware of it because it throbbed like a bastard. Her other injuries were scratches and minor bruising. Nothing a hot bath wouldn’t sort out.
Silverton was in his suite with Walker complaining about lost gambling time and already on the JDs. Mechanic was deep in thought: It’s simple. The priority here is maintain my cover, get paid and get out. That’s it. Keep it simple.
But it was anything but simple and Mechanic knew it.
The events of the day churned through her head. They were riddled with inconsistencies. Rule one: if you are going to ram a car you do it on the driver’s side. That way you immobilise the driver, who would usually be a security guy. The truck hit the passenger side, suggesting it was meant to immobilise Mechanic. Rule two: always target the money. The gunmen were not interested in Walker or Silverton, they were solely shooting at her. Rule three: if you have a gun, use it. Walker never once drew his weapon. He bundled Silverton away from the scene and stayed there.
This was never about a carjacking or a robbery. Before they had left the Hacienda she’d helped Harry cash in his chips and deposit the money with the hotel; he had about five hundred dollars at most in his back pocket. That’s not worth a truck ramming with two shooters.
This had to be driven by a higher price tag, and the only thing that fitted the bill for Mechanic was kidnapping, which led her to one conclusion: Walker had to be in on it.
He was the one who took the route down Koval and then detoured into the back roads. He was the one who escorted Harry away from the limo while the two shooters took care of her. It all fitted.
It also explained why Walker was so hostile towards her when they met. She was not part of the plan and he needed her out of the picture. But she refused to go and his only option was to eliminate her.
With Mechanic out of the way the rest of the kidnapping would have been easy. Walker would receive a knock on the head in the struggle, Harry would get taken hostage and the fun would start. Walker would liaise with the kidnappers, managing the negotiations, and Harry would be returned a million dollars poorer and missing part of his ear. It was a tried and tested gameplay.
Okay, Mechanic thought, submerging her neck and shoulders in the hot, soapy water. The fact that Walker wants to kidnap his boss and extort money is none of my business. It’s only two more days. Maintain cover, get paid and get out – that has to be the plan.
But that couldn’t be the plan and she knew it.
‘Shit, what a mess,’ her voice echoed around the tiled bathroom.
The logic was crystal clear to her.
By now Walker would have realised that Mechanic was no happy amateur. He’d also have worked out that she hadn’t been taken in by the failed carjacking routine and that she could spot the inconsistencies a mile off. This would make Mechanic a loose end, and in her experience loose ends had a nasty tendency of being dealt with.
Her options were limited.
She could run, but that would be a temporary fix. She could use another identity and start over somewhere else, but she had responsibilities now and they had to come first.
There was only one realistic option. It was staring her in the face.
Mechanic had to deal with the loose ends first.
10
It’s four hundred and forty miles from Tallahassee to Baton Rouge, which on a good run takes around six and a half hours. For Lucas that was six and a half hours in which he could freely obsess about his favourite topic: catching and killing Mechanic. Harper on the other hand had miscalculated and allowed Lucas to persuade him to make the trip.
‘Two sets of eyes are better than one,’ he had said. ‘You got to come.’
The problem was Harper hadn’t factored in the journey time. There are only so many times you can listen to Rose Royce Greatest Hits along with Lucas’s single topic of conversation and not feel the need to jump from the speeding car. They weren’t even halfway and the constant repetitive barrage had Harper reaching for the door handle.
In the end he snapped. ‘Look man, I get that you’re excited by all this, but you need to get real. You talk like we’re going to walk down Main Street and find the murdering bitch sitting there drinking a cold one in the first bar we come to.’
‘No, you get real,’ Lucas said sharply. ‘We know two things, right? She withdrew the money from the American Gateway Bank on 11307 Coursey Boulevard in Baton Rouge. We also know she sent me that letter from Baton Rouge. You’re with me, right?’
‘Yup.’ Harper let out a slow sigh. It was not as though he hadn’t heard those two pieces of information at least one hundred times in the last two hours.
‘So that has to mean she’s there. Or, if not, that’s where we need to start, right? So when we get there we need to—’
‘Just stop!’ said Harper. ‘Listen to yourself. I agree with the facts but not with your train of thought. Yes, she cleared out the bank account at American Gateway, and yes she mailed you the sugar packets to let you know she’s still alive. And yes both things happened in Baton Rouge. But she is one clever bitch, and she must know you would come looking for her. She’s not going to be there, man, think it through.’
Lucas was undaunted by Harper pouring cold water on his logic.
‘First we go to the bank and—’
‘And do what exactly?’ Harper snapped. ‘Ask to see the CCTV footage from the day she withdrew the money?’
‘That’s a start, don’t you think?’
‘And how will that conversation go? – “Hi, my name is Ed Lucas and this is my friend Dick Harper. Can we see your CCTV tapes for this date and time?” … “Can I ask, sir, is this a police matter?” … “Well, yes it is. I’m a Lieutenant with the Florida Police Department, but I’m suspended and Harper here is an ex-Lieutenant who was drummed out of the force for threatening to punch his boss in the face” – Do you really believe that’s going to cut it?’
Lucas clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
Harper hammered home his objections. ‘There are several hundred bars, restaurants and cafés in Baton Rouge and any one of them could stock those types of sugar packet. It’s a wild goose chase, Lucas. We need to rethink.’
‘We’ll talk to the bank first and take a chance with the rest. We could strike lucky.’
‘But that’s my point. You’re not listening. What if the bank says, “Okay, sir, here’s the CCTV footage, knock yourself out.” We know it was her. All it will show is Mechanic standing at the counter receiving a large amount of cash, putting it in a bag and getting the hell out of there. So what? It tells us nothing we don’t already know. And what if we find the very same brand of sugar packet in some backstreet joint? We already know she was there. What’s the point? Keep your expectations real, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Yes, but someone might know something.’ Lucas was still fizzing. ‘We might speak to somebody who knows her. Knows where she is …’ Lucas reached down and opened the glove box. Fishing around he brought out an old photo and a plastic bag and dumped them in Harper’s lap. The picture was of Jessica Sells in military dress uniform at her passing out parade. The bag was a red-topped plastic sealed evidence bag containing a
single white sugar packet.
‘Jesus Christ, Lucas,’ Harper said holding up the evidence bag.
‘They weren’t interested. I thought it would be useful.’
‘Tampering with evidence is a crime. It’s a spell in jail, that’s what it is. Aren’t you in enough trouble already?’ Harper threw them back into the open compartment and slammed it shut. ‘You have to ease back on this, man, and get some perspective or it will destroy you.’
Much to Harper’s relief, Lucas sulked and said nothing for the remainder of the journey.
Just as Harper predicted, the bank was just a bank. The ever-so-helpful junior manager said there was nothing they could do and was positively gushing when he explained to Lucas that he didn’t recall the transaction.
No shit, Harper thought, it was eight months ago.
After a mind-numbing series of convoluted discussions, with Lucas asking the same damn questions a gazillion different ways, they left empty-handed. The cafés, bars and restaurants were next.
The early start was beginning to tell on both of them as they moved from place to place, looking at sugar packets and flashing around the picture of Mechanic.
‘Have you seen this woman?’ Lucas asked over and over.
‘No, sorry,’ was the response every time.
For Harper it was soul-destroying, but Lucas was driven by a childlike expectancy that they would somehow hit the jackpot.
‘Let’s split up,’ said Harper after the seventeenth café. ‘Let’s go to the hotel, check in and get that picture photocopied. Then I’ll take the bars and you can stick with coffee shops.’
‘Good idea.’
Harper was relieved he no longer had to endure Lucas’s inane questioning. At every venue the patter was always the same.
‘Have you ever stocked these at any time?’ Lucas would say, holding up the evidence pouch containing the plain white packet.
‘No sir, nothing like that,’ was the standard response. ‘Ours have writing on them.’
‘Have you seen this woman?’ Lucas would hold up the photo.
‘No sir, I’ve not seen her.’
Harper was enjoying the peace and quiet. Staking out the bars gave him a welcome rest from Lucas’s intensity. It also provided him an opportunity to take a small whisky every so often which, because of his prolonged abstinence, now burned the back of his throat and made his head swim. Harper was at risk of sliding off the waggon.
The night was long and predictable. After the cafés closed, Lucas joined Harper on the bar crawl, but each took a different route to cover as much ground as possible. It was one fifteen in the morning when they finally met up to take stock of their progress.
‘Big fat nothing.’ Harper was not best pleased with his day.
‘Same here.’ Lucas held his head in his hands.
They were perched on chrome-and-leather bar stools and Harper cleared the glasses to one side. He ordered two drinks and spread a street plan out before them.
‘We’ve been here, here and here.’ He drew circles on the paper with his stubby fingers.
‘These are all covered. They are the most popular areas and we’ve got nothing.’ He looked at Lucas who was still staring down at the countertop. The barman clunked the drinks down, along with the check.
‘I’m tired, let’s go back to the hotel and get some shut-eye,’ said Lucas. ‘We can make a fresh start in the morning.’
Harper shook his head.
‘Are you sure, man? I don’t reckon she’s here.’
‘She has to be.’ Lucas had more than an edge of desperation in his voice. He took a long slug of beer.
Harper placed his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. ‘Look man, you carry on. I’ll get a rental car and drive back. You stay as long as it takes to get this out of your system. I can rattle some cages at home and see what falls out. There may be other evidence we don’t know about.’
Lucas looked at Harper and nodded his head.
‘You need to do this, and I need to do something else.’ Harper drained his glass in one, slid from the bar stool and left.
Lucas gazed at the froth disintegrating from the top of his beer. It looked exactly how he felt.
11
The phone in the bathroom warbled into life. Mechanic woke with a start sending lukewarm water splashing onto the tiled floor. She pulled a towel from the rail and stepped from the tub, sending more water dripping onto the floor. She lifted the receiver from its cradle on the wall.
‘Hello.’
‘Hudson, this is Walker. Mr Silverton would like to see you in his suite now.’ The line went dead before she had chance to reply. It was a quarter after twelve and she was hungry.
Mechanic dressed herself in casual gear and munched on a breakfast bar from her bag. Her work suit was out of commission, it was dirty and torn from rolling on the ground. She holstered her gun. The leather bomber jacket hid it more effectively than her tailored jacket.
The lift doors dinged open and she stepped out into the wide corridor making her way to Silverton’s room. She rapped on the door and Walker opened it wide for her to enter. He said nothing. Once inside Walker disappeared into an adjoining room.
Silverton was on the phone laughing and joking with some unfortunate person, taking large gulps of JD from a crystal glass the size of a fruit bowl. The ice chinked as he banged it down on the table and he let out an enormous belly laugh.
‘Then she blew them both away!’ he boomed. ‘Hey, look, got to go. Got some business to attend to.’ He hung up.
‘Hey, Jessica Hudson I believe!’ He crossed the room in two strides and shook her hand vigorously. ‘Shit that was something.’ He was grinning so widely his head looked as though it might split in two. ‘You took those guys out like shooting turkeys in a run. That was quite something, quite something.’ He let go of her hand and offered her a seat.
‘Sir, please excuse me, I’m not properly dressed.’
‘Nonsense, you’re fine. I have to congratulate you, that was awesome!’ Harry sat on a large sofa which engulfed him. The room was decked out in over-the-top furnishings to complement the over-the-top décor. They sat in a study with a huge glass-topped desk and comfortable chairs. Through the adjoining twin doors she could see an even larger sitting room with a massive TV which was set into the wall. Through more double doors was the bedroom. She calculated the suite had more square footage than her two-up-two-down condo in town. ‘Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?’
‘I’ve done some range work in the past,’ Mechanic replied trying to shrug it off.
‘When that guy opened fire and the bullets were bouncing off the limo, I thought …’ Harry rambled on excitedly, recounting every detail as if it was news to Mechanic. He was highly animated and waved his arms around like a windmill. Occasionally he levelled a pretend gun and fired. ‘Bang! You blew his face off from inside the car, and then …’
But Mechanic wasn’t listening. She watched Walker pacing around in the other room. He had the phone pressed to his ear and was marching about, at least as far as the cord would allow. His voice was quiet and low. He flashed glances her way but avoided direct eye contact.
‘So, what do you think?’ Silverton sat on the edge of his seat.
‘Of what, sir?’
‘My offer, what do you say?’ Harry was leaning so far forward Mechanic thought he’d topple over.
‘Sorry, Mr Silverton, could you repeat it?’ She held her hands up in apology.
‘Come work for me,’ Harry said with his usual childlike enthusiasm. ‘Join me. I could do with someone running my security and I want it to be you.’
She tore herself away from Walker.
‘Well that’s a generous offer, Mr Silverton, but I’m not sure relocating fits with my plans at the moment.’
‘I don’t need you in Philly, I need you here. I have business interests in Vegas and regularly fly people in and out. I’d like you to look after them and make sure they have a good time. Y
ou would call the shots and organise what you need. When I come to Vegas you would be looking after me. Walker’s okay but he’s not you. What do you say? I pay well.’ He finished the sentence rubbing his thumb and first finger together in the universal sign for money.
‘This is a big surprise, Mr Silverton. I don’t know what to say. I’m flattered.’
‘Then say yes.’ He got to his feet.
‘I need to know on what basis I would be employed and how that would fit with my private work.’ Mechanic’s head was working overtime.
‘Oh, details, details, details,’ Harry said waving his hands around, swatting away imaginary flies. ‘Let’s assume we’re going to get all those itty-bitty details right. What do you say in principle? Huh?’
‘Can you give me a minute?’
‘Sure, I’m busting for a leak anyway.’ He went to the desk and picked up a slip of paper. ‘Nearly forgot,’ he said handing it to her. ‘Let’s call this a saved-my-ass bonus. You earned it, girl.’ He scuttled off in the direction of the bathroom.
She held the paper in her hand and stared at the scribbled handwriting. It was a cheque for fifteen thousand dollars made out to Jessica Hudson. Mechanic reread it. It definitely said fifteen thousand, it definitely had her name on it and it definitely had today’s date on it. She looked at the cheque and then at Walker. He’d finished his call and was reading a newspaper with a coffee in front of him.
He looked up.
Their eyes locked and in that split second Mechanic knew all she needed to know.
She folded the cheque and stuffed it into her jeans pocket. She pushed herself out of the chair and walked over to Walker who was still holding her gaze. As she approached he put down his paper.
Mechanic stood in front of him invading his personal space. ‘I’m about to accept an offer to run Silverton’s security here in Vegas, which means when you’re in town you work for me.’
‘I’m gonna talk to Silverton, this isn’t going to happen.’ Walker went to stand but she held her ground blocking his path.
