Gone Cold

by Douglas Corleone

  Slowly, I raised my hands in the air. Spoke the first words in the first language that popped into my head.

  “Je ne comprends pas,” I said as innocently as possible. “Parlez-vous français?”

  The one with the metal pipe said, “Are you taking the piss?”

  “Naw,” the gunman said, shaking his head. “He’s a bloody frog, isn’t he? A feckin’ cheese-eating surrender monkey.”

  The sound of the second vehicle was growing closer. If it was Ashdown, the situation would come under control. I just needed to buy a few extra seconds.

  But before I could say another word, the driver of the green SUV shouted from his window: “Ewan, I think the bastart chucked the Chairman’s boy into the rubbish.”

  The one with the metal pipe seemed to consider his options. Then he nodded to the gunman, who spun toward the Dumpster.

  As the gunman raised the .45 and took aim at Gilchrist’s hiding spot, I charged at him.

  Spotting me in his periphery, the gunman held his fire and swung the weapon in my direction.

  In that instant I was as large and as vulnerable a target as I could be. My only hope was to reach the handgun before he squeezed the trigger.

  Desperately, I swiped at the air in front of me. Felt the metal of the muzzle beneath the fingers on my left hand and squeezed it tightly, guiding it to the side as I did.

  The gun went off.

  A hot blast scorched my palm.

  Using my momentum, I threw my right hand up near my shoulder blade and raised my elbow in an uppercut that connected with the gunman’s chin. His head snapped back, harder and faster than the one I’d head-butted back at the pub.

  He dropped flat on his back and didn’t move.

  Meanwhile, the one with the pipe slumped forward, clutching his stomach.

  I remained still as the pipe clanged against the blacktop, the sound echoing off the brick walls like a church bell.

  I looked down at the gunman, who lay at my feet. He was conscious but barely. Muttering something about Inverness, the kid had no clue as to where he was.

  The driver of the SUV sat slack-jawed, his eyes flicking from me to his fallen friends and back. Then finally settling on the good-looking kid who’d been carrying the pipe.

  Following his gaze, I locked on the moaning, groaning form as he tried to slither in one direction and then another, all to no avail.

  In the black of the alley, it was difficult to tell, but he appeared to have taken a gut shot. One from which he wouldn’t recover.

  In the next few moments, several things happened at once. The driver of the green SUV finally gathered his nerve and jumped out of his vehicle. He looked more like the kid with bad skin than the one who was dying.

  I remained frozen as the driver reached into his jacket and drew a second handgun. Another HK .45, which he immediately trained on me.

  The squeal of tires from behind him caused him to turn just in time to see Ashdown’s Nissan crossover skid to a stop, effectively blocking the SUV from any chance of escape.

  The gunman swung his weapon around. But Ashdown was already out of his vehicle, aiming his Glock 17, and shouting for the driver to drop the weapon and get to his knees.

  The driver followed Ashdown’s instructions.

  “You all right, Simon?” Ashdown called out without looking at me.

  Before I could answer we heard the bleating of sirens. Maybe as close as three or four blocks away.

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” I said, already moving toward the Dumpster.

  Ashdown said, “Am I to take it that this would be a bitch to explain?”

  I said, “Unless we want to spend the next seventy-two hours in a holding cell, we’re not even going to try.”

  I lifted the lid of the Dumpster. A hand gripping a switchblade materialized out of the rubbish and took a swipe at me, slicing my left palm.

  I swallowed the scream forming in the rear of my throat.

  As I drew back, the knife and hand vanished into the trash.

  I squeezed my bloodied left into a fist and stuffed it into the pocket of my old black leather jacket.

  With my right, I dug into the garbage and fished around for a head, a neck, an arm, something.

  Finally I felt flesh. A forearm. I slid my hand downward, gripped the kid’s wrist and, with a sudden jerk, snapped it.

  As he cried out in pain, I pulled Gilchrist free of the Dumpster and set him down on his feet.

  His eyes widened as he fixed on the fallen figure, who now lay still in a pool of blood beside the pipe.

  Battling my own agony, I shook Gilchrist out of his daze and ushered him quickly toward Ashdown’s crossover. On the way, he glanced at the SUV’s driver, who remained on the ground with his hands on his head. He also stole a glimpse of the kid with bad skin, but his gaze kept returning to the dead man.

  I shoved him forward.

  Zoey opened the rear door of the crossover and I tossed Gilchrist onto the backseat and climbed in after him.

  Ashdown tucked his Glock into his jacket and jumped back into the driver’s seat. The sirens were closing in, fast. Ashdown threw the transmission into drive and finally slammed on the accelerator.

  We peeled away just as the sirens and flashing blue lights rounded the corner.

  Chapter 16

  TWELVE YEARS AGO

  I hurry down the stairs with photo albums and shoe boxes of videocassettes under my arms. I dump everything onto the dining room table and immediately begin flipping through the photo albums, searching for the most recent pictures of Hailey.

  “Do you have any that were taken this year?” West asks.

  I nod my head as I tear through the pages, certain now of what I’m looking for but completely unsure where to find them. “We took a vacation to Disney World just a few months ago. We still use a thirty-five-millimeter camera. We went through a half-dozen rolls of film.”

  “Those will do great,” West assures me.

  I twist my neck and peer into the living room where Tasha is on the couch holding her head between her legs. “I could use my wife’s help,” I say.

  West says, “Let’s leave her be for now. I’ll help you find what we’re looking for.”

  I close one album and move on to the next, muttering, “Tasha fills these albums. She knows where everything is.”

  “It’s all right.” West lifts the lid off one of the shoe boxes. “What are these?”

  “Home videos,” I tell her. “Your partner said we should turn some over to the media.”

  “Any recent ones?”

  It takes me a moment. “Her sixth birthday party.”

  “Perfect.”

  I finally land on the photos taken during our most recent trip to Orlando. “Here they are,” I say, pulling the pictures free of their sleeves one at a time. “Hailey in our hotel room at the Polynesian. Hailey in front of the ball at Epcot Center. Hailey with Donald Duck.” A strange giggle emanates from my throat. “Donald’s her favorite character for some reason. Tasha and I never understood it. To us he’s just a bare-assed duck who always seems to be pissed off.”

  West chooses the best representations of Hailey and hands them to a uniformed officer along with instructions.

  Meanwhile, I sort through the videocassettes. Most are labeled but in Tasha’s atrocious handwriting. I crane my neck to see if she’s recovered, but she hasn’t moved an inch.

  “This one,” I say, plucking a cassette marked HAILEY’S 6TH B-DAY out of the shoe box.

  “When did this party take place?”

  “Just a few weeks ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here. In the backyard. We hit on a nice sunny day in April.”

  “Do you happen to have a guest list?”

  “A guest list?”

  “A list of the people who came. It’ll help us eliminate some sets of fingerprints, especially on the gate.”

  I hustle into the kitchen and grab a pen and a piece
of paper then return to the dining room table. As I jot down the names of the people who were here, my hand trembles and I can barely recognize my own handwriting.

  One of West’s agents pulls her away for a private conversation while I try to think back to Hailey’s party.

  West sidles up next to me, says, “There’s a locked safe in your bedroom closet. What do you keep in it?”

  Puzzled, I say, “Important papers. My service weapon. Things like that.”

  “May I have the combination?”

  I glance at the stairs and remember that West’s team is conducting a search of the entire house. Earlier I saw agents coming down the stairs with small plastic bags carrying Hailey’s hairbrush and toothbrush, presumably to obtain her DNA. Articles of Hailey’s clothing—shirts and shorts and underwear—presumably for scent-tracking canines. But what the hell are they looking for in my safe?

  It doesn’t matter. I give West the combination.

  “What else do you need?” I ask.

  West says, “Why don’t you sit down and take a breather? We have everything we need for now.”

  “And what’s happening? In the investigation, I mean. What steps are being taken to find my daughter?”

  “We’ve broadcast Hailey’s description. We’re reviewing sex offender registries to determine if there are any sexual predators in the area. We’ve initiated a neighborhood canvass using a standard questionnaire. We’re contacting Hailey’s pediatrician and dentist for her medical and dental records. And we’ve already set up a hotline to receive tips and leads.”

  “Shouldn’t I be out there looking?”

  “No, you need to be here, Mr. Fisk. In case there’s a call. In case there’s a ransom demand. In the meantime, our people are out there looking. Not just on the streets but in shrubs, crawl spaces underneath houses, in swimming pools, parked vehicles, in tree houses, on rooftops. Everywhere.”

  I turn and stare out the window. Say, “I feel like I need to be out there looking for my daughter.”

  West lays her hands on my shoulders and gently turns me in the direction of the living room. “You need to be here, Mr. Fisk. You need to be home. Loving and supporting and taking care of your wife. She needs you tonight. She’s devastated. She won’t get through this without you.”

  Chapter 17

  Despite a right wrist that was clearly broken, Kinny Gilchrist refused to go to the hospital.

  “They’ll get to me in hospital, won’t they? Especially after you killed one of them.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” I said quietly, sitting next to him in the backseat of Ashdown’s crossover. “His friend did him. His gun, his shot. I wasn’t even carrying a weapon.”

  Meanwhile, with respect to the hospital at least, I found myself in a bleakly similar situation. My left palm, wrapped tightly in a clean white T-shirt Zoey had liberated from my luggage, continued bleeding profusely and felt like it was on fire. Though I hadn’t yet been able to examine the extent of the injury, I knew the cut was long and deep and that there was possibly nerve damage. Because in addition to the agony, my fingers had gone numb. But making an appearance in the emergency room wasn’t an option after what had happened in the alley off Mollinsburn. I might as well head straight to the prison infirmary for all the good a visit to the local hospital would do me.

  The kid said, “Except that’s not how they’ll tell it, will they? I’ll be the one to catch the blame.”

  “Who are they anyway?” I said. “And why do they want you dead?”

  “If not to hospital,” Ashdown cut in from the driver’s seat, “then where to?”

  “Home,” the kid said. Only with his Scottish accent, it sounded like hame.

  “Where’s home?”

  “East Kilbride.”

  “And where’s that exactly?”

  “South Lanarkshire, innit? Take the A727 west to Busby and on to Clarkston Toll.”

  I tried flexing my fingers with mixed results. Since the nerves in the hand are located in close proximity to the tendons, damage to one could well mean damage to the other. And the flexor tendons control movement from the wrist down to the fingers. Which meant that the knife wound Kinny Gilchrist inflicted on me may well have put my entire left hand out of commission for the duration of the search for Hailey. If not permanently.

  Without a proper examination, only time would tell.

  As we headed west, I used my remaining hand to remove my BlackBerry from my pocket. I pulled up the photo of Hailey and held the screen up to the kid’s face.

  “You know this girl?”

  “Shove that phone up your arse,” he cried, knocking my arm away. “I’m in blinding pain, aren’t I? You broke my bloody wrist.”

  “I saved your bloody life.”

  On the other side of Gilchrist, Zoey was digging in her purse. “Here,” she said, pulling out an unmarked pill bottle and twisting the cap. “Take two of these, you’ll be right as rain.”

  “What are they?” Gilchrist said, holding out his uninjured hand. He popped the pills in his mouth and dry-swallowed both rather than wait for an answer.

  “Hydromorphone,” Zoey said, before popping two herself.

  “Banging,” Gilchrist said. “This is potent gear. How’d you get your hands on it?”

  She smiled. “Shagging a script writer; how else? For a tit-wank the quack will write me a taste of anything.”

  “Anything?”

  “Blues to leapers and everything in between.”

  Ashdown’s eyes blazed in the rearview.

  “Brilliant, innit?” the kid said, laughing. “You hoor. I knew you were a class bird right from the start.”

  Ashdown made a sharp right.

  Zoey looked over at me and shook the pill bottle. “How about it, little brother? Something for the pain?”

  I turned away, muttered, “How about something for the kid’s smell?”

  Kid smelled like I’d just fished him out of a Dumpster.

  Ashdown turned onto a residential road.

  “My gaff’s just two blocks down,” the kid said. “Cut the next left, will ya?”

  Ashdown pulled to the curb. “I think it’s best we let you off right here.”

  “No way, mate. They’ll kill me out here. They know where I live, don’t they?”

  “Who are they?” I said again.

  Nearly a full minute of silence followed.

  “Tell you what,” the kid finally said to Ashdown. “You drive me right up to my front door and I’ll tell you who the bloke in the photo is. Deal, mate?”

  Ashdown’s eyes locked on mine in the rearview.

  I bowed my head yes.

  * * *

  The Gilchrist house was an L-shaped Dewar that didn’t stand out among its neighbors. I’d been expecting a mammoth black iron gate or stone wall, maybe a moat, but there seemed to be no security at all. No men standing out front with guns, no bodyguards hustling outside to receive the Chairman’s son following the kid’s call to his father, explaining the situation.

  “Our gangsters do things differently,” Ashdown said by way of explanation.

  Yet the scene outside the Old Soak was something straight out of New York or Los Angeles.

  We pulled into the driveway and sat in silence.

  “We’re at war,” the kid said quietly, staring down the street as we idled in the drive, waiting for his father. “Us and the Maxwells, I mean.”

  A flash of recognition crossed Ashdown’s face in the rearview. “Tavis Maxwell?”

  “None other.”

  From the glazed look in the kid’s eyes, I assumed the hydromorphone had already kicked in and was doing its business.

  I looked at Ashdown. “Who’s Tavis Maxwell?”

  He stared back at me with a pained expression. “Last King of Scotland, they call him. The Pablo Escobar of the UK. Only Maxwell’s got more blood on his hands. And not just because he’s lived longer.”

  The kid drew an audible breath. “He’s a head
case is what he is. And you…” He stared at me with what could only be described as pity. “You just topped his only son.”

  In the rearview, Ashdown’s eyes widened in horror. “The one who got shot in the alley? That was Ewan Maxwell?”

  “That was the punter, all right.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “The one with the metal pipe?” I said, incredulous. “The only one without a gun?”

  “He’d never carry a firearm,” the kid said. “Why would he risk it? He’s always got at least two gits around to carry for him.”

  “Another British thing?” I said.

  Ashdown nodded. “Different culture. Firearms are a serious business in the UK. Get caught with one, you do serious time.”

  I said, “I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but it was one of Maxwell’s two friends who shot him. Not me.”

  The Gilchrist kid shook his head. “Those two from the SUV, they’re brothers. The MacBride brothers, Duncan and Todd. They have each other’s backs, don’t they? The MacBrides have already gotten their bloody story sorted. Believe me, mate.”

  “We’ve got to get the hell out of Glasgow,” Ashdown said to me. “Now.”

  With my good hand, I pulled up the photos on my BlackBerry. Held the screen in front of the kid’s face again. Was about to ask him once more who we were looking at when Ashdown suddenly said, “Bullocks.”

  I glanced up. Several men were casually circling the crossover. At least two were carrying double-barrel shotguns.

  One was aiming his through the windshield, directly at Ashdown’s head.

  Chapter 18

  “What you did, Mr. Fisk,” the Chairman said in a voice that sounded uncannily like Sean Connery’s, “you stepped right into the middle of a blood feud.”

  We were seated around his large but simple dining room table, the five of us: Gerry and Kinny Gilchrist, Zoey, Ashdown, and myself. The men outside had extended us an invitation. At least that was what they’d called it, though I suppose that an invitation with a double-barrel shotgun pointed at your head might well be considered a kidnapping or an unlawful imprisonment in some less sophisticated circles.