THE MAN WHO HUNTED HIMSELF

by Lex Lander

  Scant resemblance between him and his father, but a strong one between him and the older woman I had briefly met at the Heider residence in France. He had her black hair, dark sunken eyes, and sallow complexion. If he was Carl Heider’s son, that made Maura Beck his step-aunt, if there was such a thing.

  When I was seated I said, ‘So you’re another member of the family. Now I get it. I couldn’t figure why Ms Beck would want a lawyer present.’

  ‘Mrs Heider.’ Nick Heider corrected.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said.

  ‘And excuse me,’ Maura snapped. ‘If I choose to be called Ms Beck, that’s my business.’

  Nick Heider was not noticeably cowed.

  ‘You’re wrong there, Moya.’ His voice was mild. ‘Heider Promotions is a family business, and you run a part of it. As far as the family is concerned, you’re Mrs Heider, my uncle’s widow.’

  Maura fumed in silence, but declined to contest the point in my presence. Somewhat embarrassed by this domestic spat, I waited for one of them to reopen the conversation. Maura was studying my face and frowning, as if she had met me before but couldn’t quite place the occasion. For my part, I would certainly have remembered.

  ‘Why did you want to see Mrs Heider?’ Nick Heider said at last. He was swinging his crossed leg, an air of impatience about him, as if he were in a hurry to be off. Golf beckoned, no doubt.

  ‘Information, that’s all. You know why I’m here in Las Vegas.’ I redirected my gaze towards Maura. ‘Whatever you can tell me about your husband’s murder.’

  ‘Do I need to plead the Fifth?’ Maura said, looking at me then at Nick Heider.

  ‘What for?’ he said crossly, and I privately seconded the question.

  ‘I was just joking.’ Her eyes grew wide. They really were extraordinarily beautiful. ‘I was joking, wasn’t I?’

  Nick Heider and I exchanged glances and laughed simultaneously.

  ‘Unless you know something I don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m just hunting for clues, like Sherlock Holmes. Leads on the guy who pulled the trigger.’

  Maura spread her hands. ‘But I don’t have any information. I wasn’t there when he was shot. When I found him he was dead.’

  If I were a real private eye I would have interrogated her as to her whereabouts. Since I already knew who was the guilty party it would have been pointless. I was the accused and the star witness combined.

  ‘Do you have any idea about who might have done it?’

  ‘How could she?’ Nick Heider interposed. ‘It was a professional job. The man who placed the contract is also dead, so you won’t get any leads from that source.’

  Through the window, an airliner was descending towards the airport runway, the sun glinting off its white and silver fuselage. I watched it touchdown, a puff of dust thrown up by the wheels. Another safe landing.

  ‘How long do you think it will take?’ Maura asked, before taking a sip of her water.

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ I hedged. ‘Las Vegas is only the starting point. The job was done here, and the guy who placed the contract was based here, so I have to check out his connections. The hired gun could have come from any state, any country.’

  ‘My father isn’t very patient,’ Nick Heider said. ‘He’ll expect results, and fast.’

  Maura’s laugh had a bitter edge to it. ‘I’ll vouch for his lack of patience.’

  ‘Well, I’m no detective, but persistence and perseverance eventually pay off, in my experience. If I’m prepared to put in the time and effort, not to mention run a certain amount of risk when I start making waves, your father will have to cut me the necessary slack.’

  ‘That’ll be between you and him.’ Nick Heider did a brisk handwashing thing. ‘If that’s all then, Mr Freeman ...’

  ‘Not quite. Who would be a reliable contact for information on the local criminal fraternity?’

  ‘Er ... the police?’ he said vaguely.

  Yeah. I could just see myself consulting them.

  ‘That goes without saying. I’m thinking of someone on the inside.’

  Maura piped up, ‘He’s talking sense, Nicky. How can he go to the police? He needs to find a contact in gangland.’

  ‘I’m a lawyer,’ he said patiently. ‘Don’t ask me about the hoodlum element. I leave that side of the business to Pa, now that Jeff’s not around.’

  At the mention of her husband’s demise Maura bit her lip and turned away, as if she found it upsetting. Curious. From my investigations prior to the hit, I knew their marriage had been far from blissful, that he was serially unfaithful and often violent towards her. It would have been more understandable if his death had caused her the opposite of grief.

  Nick Heider conceded Maura’s point with a resigned grunt. He plucked a business card from his shirt breast pocket, wrote on the back of it, skimmed it across the coffee table.

  ‘Try him. We already milked him a couple of years ago, but you never know.’ He stood up, very abruptly. ‘If that’s all then, Freeman ...’ he said again, leaving the words hanging.

  ‘I guess so. For now at any rate.’

  ‘If you need either of us again, call my number – it’s on the card. I work on this floor.’

  He escorted me to the door. Maura didn’t speak, neither to wish me well in my endeavours, nor to proclaim her delight at making my acquaintance. Just regarded me with that vaguely searching expression on her seriously lovely face.

  ‘We look forward to some positive news,’ Nick Heider said over our handshake.

  I just nodded. Truth was, I had no idea where I was going after this. Finding a fall guy was going to be a challenge and then some. Killing him even more so. Whoever he was, he would need to be a deserving case, a bona-fide scumbag. A common lawbreaker wouldn’t do. For the victim to be credible as a hit man, I also probably needed him to be a real-life hit man. Even when I identified my target, I would have to convince all the Heiders and maybe Maura Beck/Heider that he was the assassin. That was the third challenge. Maybe even the greatest one.

  SIX

  The events leading up to the moment I killed Jeff Heider were still sharp in my memory, as were all the events that preceded all the kills – even if I sometimes forgot the names. In many respects, they were just normal days, a normal routine, except that I was always many miles from home, usually in another country. Like now.

  I had breakfasted at the Hilton. No qualms about the task that awaited me. I ate heartily and rather unhealthily: crisp bacon, two eggs over easy, tomatoes, mushrooms, all wallowing in a puddle of fat. I checked out, paid cash. The disapproving female desk clerk handled it as if it were germ-laden which, come to think of it, it was, like all money. At least she didn’t refuse it.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr. Mason,’ she said cheerfully, ‘I hope we’ll see you again.’

  Unlikely I thought at the time. Thankfully, she hadn’t told me to have a nice day.

  ‘Sure will,’ I said, trying to sound sincere, and left with a friendly wave, towing my suitcase out through the automatic doors to the waiting A-Cab, voted rudest taxi company in Vegas, maybe even in the whole USA.

  Jeff Heider was attending some sort of conference in downtown Vegas that morning, my informant informed me, to be followed by lunch. In the afternoon, like many of the idle rich in that part of the world, he was booked for a round on the TPC golf course, fifteen minutes’ drive west of the Strip, to try and improve his already impressive handicap. I went to watch from a distance, through binoculars. His opponents were a motley bunch of upstanding LV citizens, or maybe just LV citizens. They teed off a little after two-thirty. In the background bodyguards lurked, never less than three. Stereotypical husky males, wearing ill-fitting jackets to hide the hardware under their armpits or tucked in the smalls of their backs. Often such types were more intimidating visually than physically. When I was sure he was likely to play to a finish, I left.

  Heider’s house, mini-mansion I should say, was on the edge of town, in upmarket Summerlin, backing on to
another golf course. From above, according to Google Earth, it was shaped like a squared-off question mark; in one corner of the lot was a curved pool. Four servants toiled to attend his wants, of whom only the chauffeur lived in. This guy, young and weedy, occupied an apartment above the four-car garage, to the side of the house, linked by an outdoor paved pathway under a glass roof. He usually went to bed about eleven. Nobody slept with him of either sex. Now and again, when the Heiders were having an evening in, he spent the evening out. Jeff’s wife, Maura, was a dedicated gardener. I saw a lot of her kneeling over the flower beds and watering potted plants. She was the sort of woman you couldn’t see too much of, even through binoculars.

  On this particular evening she was out of town, having flown to San Diego two days previously. I had watched her onto the flight myself. According to my informant, one of the Heiders’ Mexican maids, she was going to join her daughter who was vacationing with grandparents. Both of them were due back in ten days. The maid was now $1000 richer, and would be twice as rich if her information stood up. A student of human nature, in particular the deadly sin of avarice, I regarded this intelligence as one hundred per cent reliable.

  I parked the rental car in the lot of a Trader Joe’s all night supermarket, and covered the distance to the Heider place on foot in fifteen minutes. As always when working at night, I was all in black: reversible windbreaker, jeans, sneakers, baseball cap. Jeff was out when I pitched up. In or out, it made no difference, I was ready for either eventuality. Usually, after a golfing session, he stayed on “with the guys” until the small hours. I was a patient man. I could wait.

  As darkness descended, suddenly as it tended to do in the desert, I pulled on my surgical gloves. With the moon in its third quarter, the light was enough to see by yet not enough to expose me. Without the aid of a flashlight, I entered the Heiders’ yard through a wire fence in which I had already cut a “door”. Crickets sawed away contentedly, undeterred by the approach of winter. Beat music thudded from the nearest house, which at a guess was about two hundred yards away behind a screening hedge of conifers. A murmur of voices, laughter, a car door slamming. The yap of a small dog was answered by the woof of a much larger one. A woman’s squeal made me pause instinctively. ‘You swine, Jake Hatchett!’ Male laughter was converted to a shout of alarm, then a clatter of metal followed in turn by a painful ‘Fuck!’

  Routine disturbances. Just a BBQ party, just people behaving like morons. Nothing to get jittery about.

  Across the well-watered lawn to the terrace and the French window. As long as the chauffeur was in residence, the alarm was never set before midnight. He toured the grounds every hour on the hour; his next sortie was thirty-five minutes away. The light from his window was visible from the terrace. When he emerged he invariably lit a cigarette and cleared his throat. He hummed as he did his rounds, contented and relaxed in his work, shining a flashlight into nooks and crannies, and the interior of the house. Going through the motions.

  My set of skeleton keys gained me admittance in a matter of seconds tonight as on a previous night. Familiar now with the interior layout I had no need of illumination. I crossed the sitting room, passing between the well-stocked bar and the white leather corner couch. Underfoot was all marble tiles decorated with colourful scattered rugs that I recognised as Tibetan; I had a couple in my house in Andorra. It suggested someone in the household had taste.

  In the kitchen, I raided the fridge for a half-litre bottle of mineral water. The fridge was well stocked with a variety of vegetables, some pre-packaged meats and fish, a dozen organic eggs, a couple of bottles of white wine, and so on. I drank from the water bottle, wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my windbreaker. The fridge motor tripped into action. The air con was running too; I could feel the chill on the back of my neck, though the fan was noiseless. Only the best for the Heiders.

  My thirst quenched, I replaced the half-empty bottle in a rack on the inside of the fridge door. I went on the prowl, checking for the sake of checking really. The house was empty, except maybe for the Persian cat, black as coal, I had spotted during my surveillance. Four bedrooms, all with en-suites and walk-in closets. The smallest was obviously a child’s room, female to judge from the fluffy toys, dolls and a doll’s house the size of a small shed. A shelf unit stuffed with slim books, lots of amateurish pictures on the wall. I hadn’t seen live evidence of a child during my surveillance, presumably on account of her absence in San Diego.

  The master bedroom had two large single beds, with a drawer unit between and on either side. A painting on every wall. The artists’ names unknown, to me at any rate. The rest of the furniture consisted of a vanity and a waist-high bureau in a single built-in unit, and two low chairs shaped like inverted coolie hats. The floor was covered with a plain cream fitted carpet, very plush. On the bureau, two framed photographs stood, about a foot high. One was of the happy couple on their wedding day. The wife, Maura, was in a traditional white wedding dress with a veil and all. They made a handsome couple, despite the fifteen year age gap. The other photo was of a small girl, five maybe, sitting on a swing and grinning at the camera. Now I knew what the daughter looked like. Did it trouble me that I was about to make her fatherless? A little. It didn’t change anything though. The kind of guy her father was, she would be better off without him.

  The ensuite bathroom ran the length of one wall, with a walk-in shower, white from top to bottom, including the towels. On the opposite wall, the walk-in closet was the same size as the bathroom. It had a single pole, long enough to hold a hundred garments or more. It was a his and hers set up, with hers occupying quite a bit more than his, conforming to the norms of married life. The door, unusually, had a mortise lock.

  Whether doing research, surveillance, or on the job itself, I was always on the lookout for the wrong note. When I came routinely to check the closet on my previous visit, I had found it unlocked. Now it was locked. Not only that, the key had been removed.

  Here was the wrong note. Why would anyone lock a closet unless it contained something valuable? In which case, why had it previously been unlocked? It was only a small mystery, but a mystery nonetheless. I crossed the room to close the vertical blinds, then shone the flashlight around the room, seeking the closet key. I found it instantly, in full view, on one of the bedside cabinets. Not hidden, as it would have been if the closet contained valuables. So why had it been removed from the lock?

  It was almost not worth pursuing. If the closet was locked, nobody was in there. They could hardly lock themselves in and take the key to the bedside cabinet. Maybe Houdini could have managed it, not Jeff Heider.

  Thoroughness, never taking anything for granted, had helped keep me alive over the years and the contracts. So I unlocked the closet door and entered. Along the facing wall, a hanging pole with its cargo of clothes. She was partial to printed dresses and shortish skirts of the material known as jersey. It doesn’t crease easily, I had heard. A selection of suits in plastic protective sleeves. On the shelf above was ranged a number of circular hat boxes. To my left and right were drawer and shelf units for lesser items of apparel and shoes. I crouched, panned the flashlight beam under the rack of garments. If anyone had been hiding there, their feet would have been visible. No feet. I shone the light to left, a blank wall at the end, same thing to the right. A mouse would have been challenged to hide in here.

  Satisfied that nobody had locked him or herself in the closet, and magically removed the key from the outside, I backed out, shut the door, returned the key to its previous resting place.

  My wrong note was a false alarm. No matter. Nothing was lost, and at least my record of professionalism was intact.

  It was a little after ten. I re-opened the blinds, took up position in the coolie-hat chair positioned in a corner of the room. Let the waiting begin.

  His homecoming was earlier than I expected. At around ten-forty-five headlight beams swept across the room as a car came around the curved driveway. Remaining seated, I
wrapped my fingers around the grip of the Beretta 96, the US variant of the 92, chambered for .40 S & W. From my jacket inside pocket I withdrew the Ultimount sound suppressor, and mated it to the threaded muzzle of the gun. It made an unwieldy weapon, over a foot long, but it was a necessary evil. The neighbours were too close; even inside the house, I could still hear the party music from next door through the double glazing. I couldn’t risk a gunshot.

  No other sounds. I was tensed, waiting for the unlocking of the entrance door. It was fitted with a heavy duty deadlock, the kind that makes a double clunk when operated. So it was tonight, a few minutes after he garaged the car.

  A light came on, faintly illuminating the corridor that served the bedroom area. I had left the bedroom door open for that purpose, though it had only been ajar when I entered. The chance that he would notice was minimal. I abandoned my chair and closed the shutters again.

  More light entered the corridor, brighter. From the living room, I guessed. I heard the chink of keys dumped on a hard surface. Other sounds of movement followed. He was singing an unidentifiable tune under his breath. In good humour then. Better to exit life in a positive frame of mind than feeling bad.

  The open doorway was a yellow rectangle. Suddenly he was filling it; I hadn’t heard his footfall on the tiled corridor. I was ready for him. I let him switch on the bedroom lights, which were built into the ceiling. If a man is going to die, I feel it’s only fair he should see the person doing the killing.

  He saw me at once. His eyes travelled from my face, which would almost certainly mean nothing to him, to the Beretta that was pointed at him. My grip was steady. The tip of the long sound suppressor didn’t deviate from the straight and true by so much as a millimetre.