by Lex Lander
‘That’s unfortunate,’ he said finally.
‘You came over the border without a passport?’ This from Richard.
‘It’s easy these days. Hardly any of the crossings are manned.’
Schwarzenegger snapped his fingers at the bodyguards.
‘Search him, Sergio.’
The tattooed bozo heaved his bulky body out of his chair and ambled over. Outnumbered five to one, I wasn’t going to make waves. I stood and let him go through my pockets. My stuff was tossed on the coffee table next to my drink: wallet, a handful of cents, a penknife, a handkerchief, a cell phone, one of several I owned.
Richard flipped open the wallet. It contained a few hundred euros, a couple of restaurant cards, and that was all.
‘No driving license, no credit cards?’ Schwarzenegger said, resignation in his voice. He had finally figured out where I was coming from. ‘I guess you take serious steps to protect your identity.’
What I didn’t tell him was that my passport and driving license were at the hotel where I wasn’t staying.
Richard tried the cell phone next. He pressed buttons, looked at me.
‘Prepaid, eh?’
‘That’s right. It’s all I ever use.’
‘Security conscious is good,’ Schwarzenegger said, waving Sergio back to his seat.
He stared at me for a couple of beats. It was like being under a stage spotlight.
‘My real name,’ he said at last, ‘isn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger, it’s Carl Heider.’ An apologetic smile. ‘Sorry about the foolishness. As you will know better than me, sometimes we have to play games in this business.’
The name Heider plucked a distant memory chord. On its own, without the first name, it could have been coincidence. I let it ride for now.
He removed his glasses and polished them with a black square of cloth. His eyes, reduced to normal size, never left mine.
‘The reason we asked you here is to hire you to do a job, subject to our impression of you today. You come highly recommended, which is reassuring but on its own not quite enough. We need to get to know the man behind the gun, so to speak. Does he possess all the qualities that make him stand out from the average contract killer? Is he reliable, trustworthy, capable, ruthless, and above all dedicated? And if he is all these things, does he want the job?’
He was an unusually articulate bastard for a crime boss. Most of them can’t string together words of more than two syllables, mostly well sprinkled with expletives.
‘Is it a straightforward contract?’ I asked.
‘Besides satisfying me on these points,’ he went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘it is all conditional on me knowing your name. Your real name, I mean.’
He tossed the residue of his Scotch down his throat and set the glass down with a bang. The look he gave me was stern, crafted to intimidate. He cracked his knuckles and waited for my response. Refusals would be rare, even unknown to him.
‘My name is Jack Henley, as you know. I have a passport in that name.’
‘You expect me to accept that as your real name, without proof to back it up? You’re a Brit, aren’t you?’
‘Half.’
‘And the other half?’
I could have lied, but didn’t see much point.
‘Canadian.’ I didn’t mention the Quebec element. It might have confused him.
The French window to the terrace slid back, and the golden blonde entered, Barbie Doll personified. Everyone watched as she crossed to the bar, and I was no exception. Her bikini was not generously cut. She had height and just the right amount of accessories. I wondered whose bimbo she was.
‘This is my daughter, Angelina,’ Heider said for my benefit. ‘Say hello to Mr Henley, Angie.’
His daughter. I kept my face impassive. Some daughter to let wander freely, under-dressed, in a house full of red-blooded males. At a guess she was about eighteen, going on half as much again in worldly-wisdom, and from the lazy roll of her hips, ripe for mischief.
After pouring an orange coloured drink, she strolled back towards the French window, taking a detour that brought her alongside my chair.
‘Daddy said to say hello, Mr Henley,’ she said, lightly mocking me. ‘So hello, Mr Henley.’
‘Hello yourself,’ I said.
Her glossy lips puckered in a parody of a kiss, and just in case I didn’t get that message, she fucked me with her forget-me-not eyes. Fortunately for her – and maybe for me – the male Heiders could only see the back of her head. This girl was trouble on two long, perfectly-formed legs.
Message delivered and understood, she swayed back through the French window to her sun bed on the terrace. Much safer for all those present, with the presumed exception of her father.
Her departure left a vacuum of expectation.
‘Pretty girl,’ I said eventually, feeling some comment was called for.
‘She’s fifteen,’ Heider said and his voice was heavy, with a hint of desperation. ‘If you had a daughter like her, what would you do with her?’
The question was so unexpected my jaw dropped. It warned me that her little games didn’t pass unnoticed by him. My estimation of Carl Heider as a person to be reckoned with and respected went up another notch.
‘Buy her a bigger swimsuit?’
Another vacuum, shorter this time. Then Richard Heider snorted; the snort converted to a belly laugh. Heider Sr, to my relief, joined in. Finally, when they were sure their boss was genuinely amused, so did the trio of heavies.
Decorum was restored after a while.
‘You’re all right by me, Mr Jack Henley, or whatever your goddam real name is.’ Still wheezing, Heider gestured at the bodyguard brigade and they melted away. This left Heider, nephew Richard, me, and the jailbait on the terrace. Richard went and slid the door shut.
‘Let’s talk business,’ Heider said.
I crossed my legs, sampled more Scotch sour, and assumed an alert air.
‘Let’s.’
‘I want someone killed.’
When I didn’t react to that he grunted.
‘Okay,’ he said, a wry grin softening his features. ‘That’s what you do, so that’s why you’re here.’
‘Cut to the chase, Unc,’ Richard said.
‘You’re right.’ Heider shuffled forward in his seat, inclined his upper body towards me. ‘I want you to find and kill the man who murdered my brother two years ago.’
A white envelope, A5 size, was lying on the coffee table. He nudged it towards me with the tip of his finger.
‘In there you’ll find all the dope we have on the job. It’s meagre, I have to say, but it’ll get you started. If you’re as good as du Poletti says you are, it’ll lead you to your man.’
Letting the envelope lie for now, I said, ‘Two years ago, you said. It sounds as though you need a detective before you need a hit man.’
‘I’m paying over the odds to get both in one. You’re security conscious, so you’ll understand why I don’t want to involve more people than I have to.’
‘Shouldn’t you be targeting the guy who paid the pro? Guys who do what I do are only messengers.’
‘Yeah, messengers of death.’ His grin was sardonic. ‘That aside, the paymaster’s dead. We took care of him a week or so after Jeff was killed. He was easy meat. We didn’t need a pro.’
‘Uh-huh.’
I looked at the envelope.
‘Don’t read it now,’ he said. ‘Wait until you get back home. Take some time over it. Give it some thought – a lot of thought.’
He rose, tucked his shirt more neatly in the waistband of his pants. ‘Shall we walk awhile?’
He led the way, out onto the terrace, past his daughter who didn’t as much as glance up from her eBook reader, onto the newly-cut lawn. Richard tagged along, a few paces behind, like lesser royalty in the wake of his monarch. He knew his place, though as the son of the dead man he had his share of emotional capital invested in the outcome of today’s discussions.
Ahead of us was an orchard of some sort, long ago harvested.
‘Black cherries,’ Heider said, as if I had asked.
‘Aren’t they hard to grow at this altitude?’
‘Some. They’re on the small side, not very black, and a shade acidic for my personal taste. Everyone else seems to like them though. We can’t eat them all so we sell the bulk of the crop to a market trader.’
‘The apples are better,’ Richard said from the rear. ‘Really sweet.’
‘Do you own this place?’
Heider was slow in answering, perhaps suspecting that more lay behind it than simple curiosity.
‘Why do you ask?’ he said finally.
Classic evasion, answer a question with a question.
‘Just wondered. Your being American. Er, presumably American.’
‘Uh-huh. Actually, it belongs to my wife. She’s French, born in this area.’ He turned his head towards me, a camp smile tugging his mouth out of shape. ‘Satisfied?’
‘It’s nothing to me, Mr Heider. Just making conversation the way folks do.’
As we left the grass to join a wide curving path with cinders underfoot, he said. ‘Let’s stick to conversing about the job, shall we?’
‘Fine by me.’
‘Good. We know nothing about the man, except for his name – Mason, or that was the name he used. That’s all, no first name, no description, no nationality. No certainty that it’s his own.’ He ducked under an overhanging branch. ‘I’ve been hunting him since two years ago last July.’
‘Mason,’ I said. The name was commonplace, one of the reasons why I had once used it myself. A coincidence too many? I was working out the implications when I realised Heider had asked me a question.
‘Sorry, I missed that,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering if the name meant anything to me.’
He laughed. ‘That’s just what I asked you – does the name mean anything to you? Being in the trade, in a manner of speaking.’
I shook my head slowly, still playing it ignorant. ‘If he’s a pro, it’s sure to be phony.’
‘Like yours now?’ he said smoothly.
I just smiled. ‘Being a chameleon is part of the job. Tomorrow I may be someone else.’
‘You can turn identities on and off, just like that?’ Richard said, catching up with us.
‘More or less. Once you have a provider in place you can order a fake ID off the shelf.’
‘It’s not a market I’ve had much experience with, false passports,’ Heider said.
‘And you wouldn’t tell me if you had.’
The cinder track meandered through the orchards in a double loop, finally returning us to the terrace. Angelina was still sprawled on the sun bed, on her tummy now, the clasp of her bra strap unhooked for maximum tan coverage. She was massaging oil into her arms, a bored look on her rather vacant features.
‘Don’t overdo the sun exposure, sweetheart,’ Heider cautioned. ‘It may be October but that sun is pretty damn hot.’
She yawned. ‘Sure, Daddy.’
Heider’s brow darkened, and we walked on by. As I passed, she raised herself up on her elbows, detaching the cups of her bikini bra from her breasts. I pretended not to notice, which may have kidded Daddy and Cousin Richard, but it didn’t kid her. Not a bit.
Back in the room, we remained standing. I sensed the interview was close to conclusion. Heider picked up his glass, toyed with it. I picked mine up and finished it off.
‘Where do we go from here?’ I said.
‘Read the dossier. Call me if you have questions.’ He produced a business card from his shirt breast pocket. ‘Call me anyway if you want the job.’
‘I’ll need a bit more than just a name to succeed where you failed. I’m just one guy, you have an army at your disposal, I imagine, and still you didn’t find him. It’s a tough call.’
‘A million bucks-worth of tough?’
For the first time since I arrived he had my full attention. He saw he had impressed me and smiled faintly.
‘Money still talks, eh?’
‘A million has a certain ring to it. Just to be clear, is that what you’re prepared to pay?’
‘For the guy’s head, yes.’
I didn’t take him literally. ‘You mean you want solid proof.’
‘That’s what I mean. A death certificate won’t cut it. A severed head will.’
THREE
Reclining on the minimal double bed with its carved head and baseboards, I plugged the ear buds of my iPod into my ears and tuned to Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu. It’s one of his more tranquil pieces, the rippling keyboard overture, rising and falling, before switching abruptly to the lilting tinkle that seduces the listener into a false sense of security. The accelerated run up to the finale with its descending scales always catches me unawares, no matter how often I listen to it.
As the iPod moved to the next piece, I opened the envelope. Four sheets, the top two stapled together in the top left corner. One day I supposed this stuff would be provided on a flash drive or equivalent. For now though, paper still ruled for material as sensitive as that I was holding in my hands.
I unfolded the pages. Page 1 was the CV of Jefferson Heider. Forty-eight at the time of his untimely death. Thrice married. First wife deceased (breast cancer), second wife divorced (his adultery), third wife survived him.
One child, Richard Jefferson, by first wife. The nephew from today’s meeting. Twenty-six years old. No other offspring mentioned.
The third wife, his widow, was named Maura Heider, née Beck. Like the beer. No personal data.
That was about the sum total of the background detail of the victim and his nearest and dearest. I flipped the stapled pages onto the bed and studied the top photo, which was of Jeff Heider, deceased.
The face was of a man with piercing blue eyes behind glasses with a hint of a tint and black metal frames. Almost black hair, seriously receding. A long, slightly hooked nose was underlined by thin lips with downturned corners; below the mouth, a cleft chin. He vaguely resembled his older brother, and even more vaguely his son Richard, though they shared the cleft chin.
The chance that the names Heider and Mason had been coincidences had gone from slim to none at all. It was a face that, aside from its passing likeness to Carl Heider, was shockingly familiar. As for “Mason”, it was the identity I had adopted to kill the man who was Jeff Heider, in Las Vegas two years and three months ago.
Ergo, Mason, first name Frank, was me.
Heart thudding, I returned to the two sheets of text, folded the top page over to study the second page.
The assassin was known as “Mason”, I read. No description or additional details available. That was the full extent of their knowledge. Its paucity ought to have been comforting.
Trying to stay focused through the uproar inside in my head, I carried on reading. Near the foot of page 2 was a reference to Mason’s employer, Vittorio Tosi. If I had needed a clincher that I was the assassin in question, that would have been it. Tosi was a paunchy rackets boss, with over-active sweat glands and ambitions to oust the Heider brothers and prevent them from trespassing on his back yard. Jeff, despite being the younger brother, had been the prime mover behind the Heiders’ Las Vegas operation, hence the obvious target. Tosi’s game plan was to frighten Carl Heider into accepting favourable terms for a transfer of ownership. According to these notes, a week or so after I killed Jeff, Tosi himself had been dispatched by an unidentified hireling of Carl Heider.
The final sheet was another photograph, of a woman. Maura Heider was scrawled beneath, with a phone no. It was a studio portrait, head and shoulders. Very nice head. Maura Heider née Beck could loosely be described as comely – she had the porcelain prettiness of a child’s doll: the eyes especially, an intense shade of blue that reminded me of a gemstone I had once held in the palm of my hand, its name long since forgotten. Her lashes were naturally long and curving. Continuing downwards, a snub nose surmounted
a rosebud mouth, slightly sulky at the corners. Her hair was chestnut in tone, with a soft, bouncy wave, worn around shoulder height.
I was an old admirer, having seen her before, more than once. When setting up the hit on her husband I had observed their Las Vegas residence through binoculars for a few days, and watched her tending her flower beds, and setting off on cycling jaunts that usually lasted about an hour. And, admittedly, the male animal in me had been distracted in equal parts by her looks and her figure.
Beneath the portrait was a note, handwritten in caps.
MAURA HEIDER WILL BE TOLD YOU HAVE BEEN HIRED TO INVESTIGATE THE MURDER OF HER HUSBAND IN ORDER TO OBTAIN EVIDENCE THAT CAN BE PASSED ON TO THE POLICE. IN CASE YOU NEED TO SPEAK TO HER YOU WILL POSE AS A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR AND IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES REVEAL THE TRUE PURPOSE OF YOUR EMPLOYMENT.
Curious, the caveat. Was it a sop to her sensibilities, or a wish to avoid her being labelled an accessory, or because she couldn’t be trusted?
Not that it mattered. Posing as a private eye would not be a new experience. What mattered was how the hell I was supposed to kill myself without actually committing suicide.
A bare handful of people – almost exclusively close family and close friends – knew me as André Warner. None of them was aware of how I earned a living. Of those who were aware, only one also knew my real name. This was the man who had texted me about the Heider meeting, the man to whom I would now have to appeal for help and advice.
Giorgio du Poletti – Giorgy to most – was Sicilian, fifty-five years old, colleague, associate, but not a friend, though he occasionally claimed that standing when it suited him. For the past two years he had provided most of my work on a first refusal basis. He was a key factor in my professional life.
Before I decided on my next step, I needed a second opinion. Giorgy’s uniqueness in my circle of acquaintances made him the natural, indeed the unique choice. Not only that, but my meeting with Heider had been initiated by him. It was partly thanks to my doing his bidding that I was now in a fix that, if not handled properly, could be the finish of me.
My return to Sitges and Seaspray was put on ice. I texted Giorgy to check his whereabouts.