The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets)

by James, Harper

  ‘Get him cleaned up,’ D’Amato said, walking away.

  ‘What about my wallet and phone?’ Jesse said.

  ‘You’ll get them back later, we’ll mail them to you. I need to take a few details down first. You know, names and addresses, phone numbers, that sort of thing. People I might need to reach out to.’

  Jesse groaned.

  ‘Maybe a few photos of the lovely Diane,’ D’Amato carried on with more of an edge to his voice. ‘Just imagine what she’d look like sitting in this chair.’ He put his foot on the chair leg and rocked the chair and Jesse back and forward. ‘All those soft, warm parts you love to bury your face in hanging down through that hole. Perhaps I’d make you choose between you and her.’

  He looked Jesse straight in the eye.

  ‘I only just met you, Jesse, but something tells me you’d find that a harder decision than most men. You look like the sort of man who values his own skin more than anything else.’

  Jesse wanted to argue with him but no words would come.

  ‘I’ll leave the photos Seppe just took on the phone for you. Just in case you forget how lucky you’ve been today.’

  Chapter 29

  D’AMATO WENT BACK TO scrolling through Jesse’s phone, his butt parked against a stack of chairs, as the two bouncers took Jesse to get his clothes. Jesse walked woodenly, not just from the kick in the balls, a dazed look on his face, the kind a man got when he saw something he’d never expected, a long-dead relative, perhaps, or a dead dog in his bath.

  ‘You were too easy on him,’ Samantha, said. ‘You didn’t even find out how much he knows. You and Seppe were too busy playing games.’

  She walked over and sat down gingerly in the chair Jesse had been tied to, careful not to get any splinters.

  D’Amato gave her a look. Christ, she was a nasty piece of work. He wouldn’t have fancied Jesse’s chances in the chair if she’d been calling the shots. The floor would have been awash with blood. He reckoned she would’ve actually used the bolt cutters on the poor bastard. He knew it wouldn’t have been the first time. She’d spent time in prison for killing a man with a straight razor and a vivid imagination. But she was good at what she did, she pretty much ran the show—the legit side and the other stuff as well.

  Seeing her sitting there and his threat to Jesse about Diane reminded him that he’d never had a woman in the chair before. Now that would be fun. Depending on the woman of course. Not Samantha. He didn’t want to see her in it without her clothes. The thought of it sent a shiver through him.

  ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

  She gave a small twitch of her shoulders. ‘Perhaps—for the moment.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you. Getting your panties all wet, thinking I might let you loose on him with the knife, were you?’

  ‘Up yours, Tony,’ she spat and glared at him.

  He had that stupid look on his face that she hated, just like Seppe. The pair of them looked like a couple of inbred retards. Acted like it too.

  ‘You didn’t ask him a single thing.’

  He took one of the chairs from the stack and sat down. It groaned under his weight. Samantha was still sitting in the chair without the seat.

  ‘So? Did you see him? Beats me how he didn’t piss or crap himself.’ There was genuine respect in his voice. ‘I would have done. Even if he knew everything, he’s never going to say a word to anyone.’

  ‘Still—’

  D’Amato held up a meaty hand, the one he’d used to send Forrest Snr into the next life.

  ‘Look, the fact that he’s down here on his own means he doesn’t want to go to the cops. He wants to sort it out himself. God knows how or why, but that’s what he was trying to do.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘Now he’ll drop that too, scuttle off back home.’

  She didn’t look convinced. He felt like saying to her: We can’t kill everybody just in case.

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  He opened his hands towards her. ‘Then he’s all yours. You can even borrow the chair.’

  She smiled at that and suddenly realized she was still sitting in it. She stood up quickly.

  ‘So long as you promise to clean up the floor afterwards.’

  He raised an eyebrow as if to say: do we have a deal?

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘We might have another problem,’ he said, and told her about Forrest Snr’s unfortunate accident and the implications for their operation.

  ‘Shit, it’s just like they say—bad things come in threes.’

  ‘Threes?’ It took a moment to register. ‘What else?’

  He watched as her face took on its habitual scowl.

  ‘We might have a problem with that snooty little cow Gina.’

  ‘That’s the slim, good looking one, isn’t it? The one with the hair. Bright too, I seem to remember.’

  Samantha gave him the finger and carried on. ‘She’s snooping around. I had a word with her, gave her that photo—you know the one.’

  D’Amato nodded. He remembered that incident. Lucky guy. ‘That should keep her quiet, shouldn’t it?’

  Samantha’s face creased into a frown. ‘We sent her a second copy in her own picture frame as well, to spook her, let her know we’d been in her house. But I’m not so sure with her. I think she’s trouble.’

  ‘I’ll get Seppe to talk to her. Maybe we can come up with something to really shake her up. You were probably too easy on her.’

  They were interrupted by the sound of Jesse’s phone ringing on the table. D’Amato leaned over and picked it up. He looked at the screen. ‘Evan Buckley,’ he said. ‘I wonder who he is? Let’s go and ask friend Jesse.’

  Chapter 30

  JESSE HAD GOT HIS pants and shoes back on and they let him keep the T-shirt as a reminder of his visit. At least it was dry. They’d given him his keys back and he was as good to go as he was ever going to be when the two bouncers stepped aside and D’Amato and the old hag came in.

  D’Amato waved Jesse’s phone at him. ‘Who’s Evan Buckley?’

  The question took Jesse completely by surprise. D’Amato was watching him closely.

  ‘What’s up? You swallow a fly?’

  ‘He’s just a guy I work with. Why?’

  ‘Because he just called you, dummy.’ D’Amato prodded Jesse in the chest with the phone. ‘And I want to know why.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So what sort of work do you do?’

  ‘I’m a hedge fund manager.’

  D’Amato snorted. ‘A hedge fund manager? What’s that? You go around trimming bushes? Why don’t you call him back? See what he wants.’

  Jesse’s throat closed up, his heart going crazy in his chest. He’d thought he was home free and now that idiot, Evan, was calling him and putting him in danger again. He wiped a clammy hand on the side of his pants.

  ‘What for?’

  D’Amato snorted again. ‘What d’you mean what for? To see what he wants. It might be important.’

  He held the phone up to his ear, worked a look of concentration onto his sweaty face. ‘Buy, sell, buy, sell,’ he shouted into it. ‘All that stuff. That’s what you do isn’t it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So call the man back. I want to hear high finance in action.’

  Jesse’s mind was racing. There was no way he could risk calling Evan. The speaker on his phone was really loud and they’d all hear every word. Hear Evan say something dumb like You really have to go the police Jesse. You’re all they’ve got.

  ‘It’s not important. He’s just a secretary.’

  D’Amato looked incredulous. ‘What? A guy?’

  Jesse nodded.

  ‘What is he? Some kind of faggot?’

  ‘Probably. I never asked.’

  ‘I was a big-shot hedge-trimming executive, I wouldn’t want a faggot for a secretary.’

  Jesse shook his head wearily. ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ D’Amato said, ‘I’m gon
na call him up. Tell him he should get a guy’s job, leave sitting on the boss’s lap to the ladies. How d’you do redial?’

  Jesse snatched his phone out of D’Amato’s hand. It slipped out of his hand onto the floor. He bent down and picked it up again. Damn. It hadn’t broken. Why couldn’t he have bought some cheap crap?

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll call him.’

  He pressed redial and listened to the phone ringing at the other end. He pressed it tightly to his head to try to muffle the sound. Evan always shouted on the phone. Please, please, go to voicemail. D’Amato smiled thinly and clamped his hairy hand round Jesse’s wrist and pulled the phone a few inches away from Jesse’s ear.

  Evan picked up. ‘Jesse—’

  ‘Look, Evan,’ Jesse said in a tight voice, ‘I told you not to interrupt me while I’m down here. I’ve got important meetings back to back. You know as well as I do, there’s a lot riding on this.’ His voice was rising as he talked. ‘I haven’t got time for inter-departmental bickering or whatever else it is. I don’t suppose it’s anything important or Diane would have called me.’

  He hoped to God Evan would catch on, surely the mention of Diane would alert him—she’d be the last person he’d want involved.

  There was the slightest of pauses. Hopefully the sort of pause a junior employee might take after getting it in the neck from his boss.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jesse,’ Evan said, his voice clear as day. He really did sound sorry too. ‘You’re right, it’s not important. It can wait. When are you back in the office?’

  ‘I’ll be back in tomorrow. I’ll see you then.’

  He cut the connection.

  D’Amato was giving him that head-cocked look again. Jesse wondered if he was about to applaud the little piece of theater he’d just listened to.

  ‘You want to get them to send you on some management courses,’ D’Amato said. He snorted. ‘If I talked to my guys like that, they’d walk out.’

  He snatched the phone out of Jesse’s hand and turned and walked away, almost knocking over the woman behind him.

  Chapter 31

  THE CONNECTION WENT DEAD in Evan’s ear. He put the phone back in his pocket. What the hell was that all about? It didn’t take much working out. Jesse had come back and got himself into more trouble. And he’d bet dollars to donuts, he’d gone straight back to the club, that’s where he was now. He’d have to head over there himself.

  Pulling into the parking lot, he had to swerve sharply to the right to stop some lunatic in an identical, anonymous rental to the one he was driving from taking his fender right off as he was coming out. He leaned his head out the window to give the idiot some abuse and did a double take. It was Jesse. But not as he’d ever seen him look before. His eyes were wild and his hair was plastered to his scalp. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a demonic snarl and it looked like he was wearing a Chi Chi’s T-shirt. Definitely not the usual smug Jesse with his designer clothes and his designer sunglasses perched on top of his head.

  Jesse had barely seen Evan’s car, let alone seen who was driving it. Evan waved his arm out the window and shouted Jesse’s name but he might as well have coughed politely for all the attention it got him. Jesse fishtailed out of the lot and floored it. Something had spooked him that was for sure. Evan looked over at the club, half expecting to see a bunch of guys with baseball bats tearing across the road after him, but there was no one. He slammed it into reverse and backed out of the lot to the sound of a blaring horn as he was almost rear-ended by an old pickup. The grizzled old rube driving it leaned out to give him the sort of mouthful he’d been about to give Jesse, but he was already gone, his foot to the floor in an attempt to catch Jesse.

  On the other side of the street, Samantha flicked her cigarette butt out of the open upstairs window, not caring whose hair it landed in. She’d had a perfect view of the whole thing. She’d come up to watch Jesse leaving, see what car he was driving, maybe get the license number. She didn’t care what D’Amato thought, she knew the guy was trouble. He must be bipolar or unbalanced in some way. Maybe just plain nuts. No normal person would have come back to the club on his own. What did he think he was going to do? Walk in and say Excuse me, would you mind processing a thirty-grand refund on my card, I think you’ve overcharged me. Who could say what he might do next? One lap round the goldfish bowl and he’d probably have forgotten all about D’Amato’s pantomime performance. Just like she told him.

  She watched him scuttling across the road to the parking lot. He was in a complete daze, just ran out into the road, nearly got flattened by a semi-trailer. The truck’s air horn had almost blown him into the lot. He tripped and just managed to scrabble out of the way at the last minute. Another couple of seconds and he’d have been toast and that would have been the end of his interfering. Then he’d fumbled the car keys—she’d thought he was going to smash the window in his hurry, or just run down the street screaming his head off. She heard him cussing all the way from where she was. The guy was absolutely petrified, she couldn’t argue with D’Amato on that, but for how long? So she’d made a note of his license number even though it looked like a rental.

  She certainly hadn’t expected to see what happened next. She was sure she recognized the guy in the other car that Jesse almost hit in his blind panic to get away. He’d definitely recognized Jesse and had taken off after him almost as fast. And she’d bet it wasn’t just to catch him and explain the finer points of driving etiquette. No, there was something going on. If he wasn’t the guy she’d seen arguing with Gina the night before, she’d be a monkey’s uncle. There was definitely some conspiracy between Gina, Jesse and this guy and it had to be connected to the scam they were running. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise. She turned away from the window and headed back downstairs. She was going to enjoy telling D’Amato I told you so.

  Chapter 32

  JESSE SLOWED DOWN ONCE he’d put some distance between him and the club, and Evan was able to catch him up without any problem. His adrenalin rush was fading fast and he was driving like an old fart now. They’d joined the freeway and were heading south out of town on the sixty-five and Evan guessed he was making straight for the airport. It didn’t look like he was even going to check out of his hotel unless he’d been staying in one of the airport hotels.

  Evan accelerated and pulled alongside Jesse’s car, looked over at him. He was in a daze, staring straight ahead, hands clamped so hard on the wheel his knuckles were white. He gave a blast on the horn. He might just as well have given another polite cough for all the good it did attracting Jesse’s attention. He gave another, longer blast. Jesse turned his head in slow motion and stared right through him. His eyes weren’t so much wild now as vacant. The lights were on but there was definitely nobody home.

  Evan buzzed his window down and leaned across. ‘Jesse, pull over,’ he shouted.

  The mention of his name snapped him out of it. And then some. He jerked upright like he’d been woken from a deep sleep, lost control and swerved onto the shoulder heading straight for a streetlight. Evan braked and dropped back. Jesse wrenched the wheel to the left and got the car back onto the blacktop missing the light by inches. Evan pulled alongside again and looked over. Jesse looked back, recognition dawning in his eyes. He nodded and pulled onto the shoulder again and slowed to a halt and jumped out. Evan pulled up behind him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Jesse said, as Evan climbed out of the car.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ Evan said incredulously. ‘I’m doing what you’re paying me to do. More importantly, what are you doing here?’ He jabbed his finger at Jesse’s chest. ‘Apart from making everything ten times worse by the look of it.’

  He looked Jesse up and down. He’d been right, he was wearing a Chi Chi’s T-shirt. His chinos looked like he’d been for a swim in them and they’d dried on him. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His hair was matted on his head and his left eye was twitching. He looked like every muscle in
his body was ready to snap. There was also a strange smell coming off him on top of the rank smell of body odor. He leaned in and sniffed. It smelled like rotten fish. If it had been the police who’d pulled him over he’d have been busted for vagrancy.

  ‘Well you can forget all of that now,’ Jesse said.

  ‘What do you mean, forget all of that?’

  ‘The investigation. Everything. Drop it.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘No,’ Jesse shouted, his voice shrill, ‘not, just like that.’ He tried to run his fingers through his hair but it was too matted. The twitch in his eye was still going ten to the dozen. ‘You have no idea what I’ve been through.’

  ‘So tell me. What are you doing down here in the first place?’

  Jesse didn’t have an answer, not one he wanted to share with him.

  ‘You were at the airport on your way down here when I called you the other day, weren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Jesse shrugged and gave him an awkward smile. ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Why are you here in the first place?’

  ‘I couldn’t just sit around. It was driving me crazy.’

  He paused, unsure whether to say any more.

  ‘What? If there’s something else going on, you’ve got to tell me.’

  Jesse kicked the car tire with a still-soggy shoe. ‘I didn’t tell you before, but I’ve lost one of the photos.’

  ‘Lost it?’

  Jesse stopped kicking the tire and stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘I dropped one when they first arrived in the mail—Diane was coming down the stairs, I panicked and dropped one, kicked it under the kitchen cabinet. I went out and when I got back it was gone. I don’t know where it is.’

  If he’d wrung his hands he couldn’t have looked more despairing. Evan waited for him to go on.

  ‘I don’t know if Diane picked it up. It’s driving me berserk every time I see her. I don’t know if she’s suddenly going to say Look what I found under the kitchen cabinet you cheating bastard. I had to get out.’ He slammed his palm down onto the roof of the car. ‘Do something.’