Atonement

by Michael Kerr

  EPILOGUE

  Wade stepped into the elevator on the sixth floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, followed by Lenny Benedict. Lenny pressed the button for the second level parking garage.

  The meet in one of the hotel’s finest suites had gone well. Wade had come to what promised to be a lucrative agreement with Boris Gorchev, who headed up the Russian Mafia in the city, and Carlos Moreno, the leader of a Colombian drug cartel. Wade’s take from future imports had been raised by a healthy percentage, due to his thriving network of pushers, and the substantial increase in sales of heroin-based product over the previous twelve months.

  Lenny walked out first. Made his way along the line of cars to the midnight-blue Mercedes, thumbing the remote as he neared it. He opened the rear nearside passenger door as Wade reached the vehicle and began to step inside.

  Lenny had no time to think, let alone reach for his gun. A hand clamped onto the back of his neck, and he was jerked backwards, spun round, and had his forehead slammed hard against the roof of a Jaguar XK three times, knocking him senseless.

  Wade heard the noise, and knew that something was wrong. He scrambled across the seat, pulled on the door handle to open it, but was dragged back by both legs, to fall out and onto the concrete on his knees.

  Logan jerked his left forearm hard against McCall’s throat and simultaneously punched him in the right kidney with his clenched fist. He then applied his right forearm behind the gangster’s neck and took a step back to take up a balanced stance, with leverage and strength totally on his side, preventing McCall from bending forward to resist the hold. By exerting his full power with both forearms, he twisted the head down and to the left and the neck broke almost instantly.

  Wade McCall felt a second of excruciating pain as cervical vertebrae C4 fractured. Had immediate and professional treatment been on hand, then a hole could have been cut in his trachea and a tube inserted, to be connected to a ventilator. Unfortunately, for Wade, no such help was forthcoming, and his sudden inability to breathe proved fatal.

  Logan walked away, casually, so as not to draw attention. At no time had he faced the closed-circuit camera that covered the side of the garage where the attack had taken place. And he was wearing a long-billed ball cap, and had kept his face down throughout the fifteen seconds it had taken to immobilize Lenny Benedict and kill Wade McCall.

  Limping for effect, he made his way to the fire escape stairs and quickly descended to ground level and walked out onto the sidewalk. A half hour later, after having dumped the baseball cap and the gloves he had worn into a trash can, he was on a Greyhound heading south to Durango.

  Logan allowed himself to relax. The threat was negated. He felt no sense of elation or guilt at having ended McCall’s life. In his opinion the gangster had deserved to die, as atonement for his many sins, although he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to deal with him personally if he had not believed that Kate might still be at risk from the man.

  The bus kept ahead of a storm front that had already blanketed Wyoming and much of northern Colorado in snow. And as it moved south towards the state line, Logan was already looking forward to spending a few days in Santa Fe.

  He folded his parka up and placed it against the window as a pillow, and soon after fell into untroubled sleep.

  END

  The modern-day drifter will be back soon in book 3 ― ABSOLUTION.

  About The Author

  Michael Kerr is the pseudonym of Mike Smail the author of several crime thrillers and two children’s novels. He lives and writes in the Yorkshire Wolds, and has won, been runner-up, and short listed on numerous occasions for short story competitions with Writing Magazine and Writers’ News.

  After a career of more than twenty years in the Prison Service, Mike now uses his experience in that area to write original, hard-hitting crime novels.

  Connect With Michael Kerr and Head Nook Books and discover other great titles.

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  www.michaelkerr.org – Michael Kerr’s official site

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  Kindle Store (US & UK)

  http://www.michaelkerr.org/amazonus - Michael Kerr at Amazon US

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  Other Books By Michael Kerr

  DI Matt Barnes Series

  1 - A Reason To Kill Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  2 - Lethal Intent Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  3 - A Need To Kill Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  The Joe Logan Series

  1 - ‘A Reacher Kind of Guy’ – Aftermath Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  Other Crime Thrillers

  Deadly Reprisal Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  Deadly Requital Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  Black Rock Bay Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  Children’s Fiction

  Adventures in Otherworld – Part One – The Chalice of Hope Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords

  Deadly Reprisal – Sample

  PROLOGUE

  THE only safe secret is one that no one else is privy to. Steve Taylor knew that. Maybe he would be safe from retribution, but was going to believe otherwise and keep looking over his shoulder. He’d seen the results of complacency firsthand, and taken full advantage of those that had underestimated him as an enemy. One of his main strengths was that he had no real fear of the hereafter, only the here and now. But that didn’t mean he had a death wish. Every day above ground was a bonus.

  Leaving the cottage, Steve trudged beneath a canopy of palm fronds, out onto the beach; a cooler full of Coors Light swinging from his left hand. At the small of his back, tucked in the waistband of his shorts – hidden from view under a loose fitting Hawaiian-style shirt – he could feel the comforting pressure of the Browning Hi-power pistol. It gave him what would soon prove to be a false sense of security.

  Sitting on the still warm sand, Steve watched a couple of kids throwing a Frisbee to each other in the fading light, as he drained a can of Coors, belched, and lit a cigarette.

  A quarter mile distant, a lone figure approached, stopping every few yards to bend down. Steve smiled. They – whoever they were – called it the Sanibel Stoop. Not many tourists could resist picking up the shells that were left high and dry at low tide. He’d done it himself. It was a somehow therapeutic and addictive pastime.

  He pondered on events that had conspired to lead him to this time and place in his life. He was on the run from the police, and the mob. However tranquil the present surroundings, he knew that his life expectancy was in serious danger of being explosively curtailed. He had done a deal with the cops; his continued freedom in return for ensuring that when Eddie Moscone went to trial, the crime boss would get life for his hand in at least a dozen killings. But he had slipped his minders in London and flown the coop, to start over in the U.S. He was out of the loop, living one day at a time, knowing that everyone wanted a piece of him.

  Buddy Miller thought that he looked the part. He was wearing an oversize, straw cowboy hat, mirrored shades, a baggy pair of knee-length shorts, and plastic sandals. His beer gut and thin, white-skinned legs promoted the appearance of someone no more sinister than a middle-aged guy who’d just hit the beach and was doing what all the other visiting morons did; collect shells.

  Less than a hundred yards away from his mark. There was no hurry. Buddy picked up a large conch, examined it, and walked across to where the surf fizzed on the wet sand, to hunker down and rinse the shell before popping it into the white plastic bag, on the bottom of which rested a Glock 17 fitted with a suppressor.

  Three pelicans glided by, scant inches above the ocean’s surface. The man who now called himself Jerry Mason thought that they looked prehistoric, like pterodactyls. The big, dull orange sun was now s
lipping quickly over the horizon, making a fitting backdrop to silhouette the large-beaked birds.

  “Hey, Taylor?” A voice behind him.

  Fuck! Even as he turned his head, he knew that it was over. How he’d been found didn’t matter. He was going to die: Knew that the hand inside the plastic bag was pointing a gun at him, but reacted instinctively, twisting, diving sideways as he reached back under his shirt to grasp the butt of the Browning.

  Steve’s last image was the reflection of a glorious sunset in the stranger’s shades. A split second later he simply ceased to exist as a bullet punched through his forehead to pulverize his brain and take the back of his skull out, blowing his twitching body into the surf. There were no last thoughts, regrets, or even time to feel fear.

  Buddy looked both ways. He’d waited until the two kids had run off, after being summoned by an unseen voice. It was mid-November, low season, and until the Thanksgiving holiday brought hordes down to infest Florida, it was relatively quiet. He stepped forward, put another slug in the mark, and released his grip on the pistol in the now holed bag. Spent a couple of seconds watching dozens of half-inch-long fish glint silver as they darted in to gulp down the blood and tissue that was now liberated from the corpse’s head, before he ambled up the beach, through a fringe of palms to enter Taylor’s cottage and quickly, expertly search it. He found nothing.

  Back in the rented Ford Taurus with false plates, Buddy opened his cell phone and made a call to New York City.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Buddy.”

  “And?”

  “I made the sale.”

  “Sweet. See you when you land.”

  Buddy broke the connection and drove off slowly along West Gulf Drive. Fifteen minutes later he was crossing the causeway to the mainland. Sanibel appeared to be a very pleasant island, all low-rise and laid back; the type of place he would like to revisit someday with Muriel, his wife of thirty-one years.

  Picking up I-75 north, Buddy planned to spend the night up in Tampa, and maybe get himself laid before flying back to the Big Apple. This job had made a nice change. Buddy liked to travel, it broadened the mind.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “TAYLOR turned up,” DS Regina (Reg) Stuart said, placing a mug of black coffee on her boss’s desktop, after first pushing a sheaf of papers to one side to make room for it.

  “Music to my ears, Reg,” DI Ben Drury said, closing and tossing a dog-eared manila file onto a stack of others that were leaning Tower of Pisa fashion on the edge of his desk. “Where is the scumbag?”

  “The States. In a morgue at Fort Myers in Florida.”

  “Uh?”

  “He was found with his brains blown out on some beach.”

  Ben took a sip of coffee. “When?”

  “Two days ago. He was staying at a small beach resort under the name of Jerry Mason. The local police put his prints through AFIS – the Automated Fingerprint Identification System – and came up with his real ID. He’d been lifted by Dade-Metro in Miami four years ago for GBH on a nightclub owner at South Beach. Charges weren’t filed, due to the complainant being killed in a hit and run. They couldn’t tie Taylor to it, but were sure he’d arranged for it to happen.”

  “Shit! That puts us back to square one with Moscone. Without Taylor’s testimony, he’s untouchable.”

  “I wonder how he found Taylor? We couldn’t.”

  Ben sighed. “When he did a runner from Witness Protection, Moscone’s boys will have been watching, and followed him. End of story.”

  “So what do we do now, boss?”

  “Confirm that it really was Taylor who got capped. He was a slippery customer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d faked his own death.”

  “It’s definitely him. We got an attachment of autopsy photos sent through with the report. He’d dyed his hair, shaved off his beard, and the crabs had started in on him, but he was still recognizable. And he had an old SAS tattoo on his right arm. We haven’t got the print comparison through yet, but I think it’ll be a formality.”

  “Is that it, Reg?”

  “ ‘Fraid so, boss.”

  “Okay, so let’s concentrate on other fish. No good crying over one that got away.”

  Eddie Moscone was walking on air. The cops – and in particular the pricks in the Serious Crimes Squad, who’d been on his back for over two years – had fucked-up, royally. With Taylor dead, they had zilch. And anyone else who might have been thinking of making a deal with the filth would think twice, now that it was common knowledge of how the rogue hitman was traced to the sunshine state and whacked. It was a demonstration that disloyalty could seriously damage your health. And that running didn’t get you very far. The world really was a small place nowadays.

  Eddie was in his office at the Raffaella Club. He was talking on a secure line to Joey Farino in New York.

  “I owe you, Joey,” he said. “You need anythin’ taken care of this side of the pond, just name it.”

  “I was only too happy to help out, Eddie,” Joey said. “That’s what friends are for. And it was no big deal. When the mark flew in, he got a cab into town and rented a car. All my guy had to do was pick his time and attach a gizmo to it. These satellite trackin’ devices are the business. No one can take a powder with technology like that keepin’ a fix on ‘em.”

  “It’s a changin’ world, Joey. I can’t even work a fuckin’ DVD. I gotta get my daughter to do it for me.”

  “That’s why we pay people to look after business, ain’t it, Eddie? Stay well.”

  “An’ you, my friend. Ciao.”

  Eddie sat back and smiled. Everything was back on an even keel. “Get me a JD, Tommaso,” he said to the hulking young man who was sitting in front of a wall-mounted plasma television, watching cartoons with the volume turned down.

  Tommaso Corsi leapt to his feet and strode over to the corner bar. Poured three fingers of Jack Daniel’s into a lead crystal glass, and used tongs to put several wedges of ice in it. He worshipped Eddie, and would do anything for the man. Eddie Moscone was his half sister’s husband, and had taken him in as a thirteen-year-old, to raise as a son. If Eddie said jump, all Tommaso might ask is: ‘How high’?

  “Now get Nick up here,” Eddie said, taking the proffered glass from the enormous hand that held it out rock steady in front of him.

  Tommaso relinquished the JD and picked up the phone to ring down to the gaming room and summon Nick Darvo.

  “Yeah, boss,” Nick said, entering the office after punching a four digit number into the panel on the door to gain entry. Eddie put security, not cleanliness, next to godliness. Even had a bank of wall-mounted monitors facing his desk, to watch all movement within the club, and outside the front and rear entrances. CCTV negated any surprise visits by the police or other unwelcome callers. It was just one of the many tools he employed to keep ahead of the game.

  “I want you an’ Tommaso to go see the bitch that Taylor was shacked up with. I have it on good authority that he kept tapes of telephone conversations I had with him. He didn’t give them up to the police, or have them with him in Florida. Maybe she knows where they are. Find out. An’ one way or the other, hurt her.”

  “How hurt do you want her, boss?” Nick asked.

  Eddie put a manicured thumbnail to his front teeth and flicked it forward to produce a loud click.

  Nick nodded and suppressed a smile. He enjoyed killing women.

  Marcy Curtis had heard the news. Knew that Steve was dead. Even knew that it was odds on that Moscone was behind it. She had not known where Steve had gone, and was pissed off that he had not contacted her after he’d done a runner from the police, who were protecting him. She had done a lot of soul-searching; decided that she didn’t need him in her life anymore. The eighteen months spent together had been fun. But when the Old Bill had broken into their apartment in the middle of the night and dragged them both out of bed at gun point, she had started to see Steve for what he really was. The police had questioned her
for nearly two days, before seemingly accepting that she had no idea of Steve’s involvement with Moscone and the mob. Jesus! They’d said that Steve was a contract killer. She didn’t want to believe it, but on some level knew that it was probably true. It explained his mysterious trips, and the fact that he would not discuss his business, apart from saying that he was a trouble-shooter for an oil company, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  It had been two plainclothes cops that came round to break the news. With no preamble, the DI – a steely-eyed, square-jawed type by the name of Drury – had told her that Steve had been found shot dead on a beach in Florida. Said that if she had been holding out on them over anything, then now was the time to come clean. She had stifled the tears and told him to go to hell.

  Now, twenty-four hours after the cops’ visit, Marcy had got to grips with the situation. Had even phoned Steve’s brother in Durban, who she had never met, but whom Steve had talked about a lot.

  Harry Taylor ran a small, elite safari operation, taking the well-heeled up north into the Hluhluwe Game reserve, which was one of the last refuges of the white rhino. Harry was reputedly a gung-ho type, who thrived on adventure and danger.

  “Have you heard about Steve?” Marcy had said, after telling Harry who she was.

  “What do you mean? Heard what?”

  “He...he’s dead, Harry. He turned up on a beach, somewhere in Florida. He’d been shot.”