The Long Shot (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “Yeah, I read that in the Sun.”

  “So we think it would be a good idea if you left the city for a while. Your parents live in Chicago, right?” Feinstein nodded and continued to chew his fingernails. “We’d like you to visit Chicago for a few days. From Monday to Thursday.”

  “Not again,” said Feinstein, “you’re not running me out of town again?”

  “It’s not just you, it’s everybody on the watch list, so don’t take it personally. You leave town on Monday, and you check in with our office in Chicago.” He handed Feinstein a card. “This agent is expecting to see you on Monday evening, and you’ll check with him twice a day until Thursday morning. Then you can come back.”

  Feinstein looked as if he was about to burst into tears. “I don’t believe this, I don’t believe you can screw with my life like this. This is America.”

  “It’s precisely because it’s America that we can screw with your life,” said Otterman.

  “I made one mistake, and I have to pay for it forever.”

  “No, you’ve made lots of mistakes, but you made one big one, and that’s what you’re paying for,” said Otterman. “You know the procedure; if we don’t hear from you in Chicago we’ll come looking for you here. And you don’t want that, do you?”

  “I’ll lose my job, I don’t have any vacation days coming,” Feinstein whined.

  “Tell them you’re sick, tell them anything. Just get out of the city.”

  Tears welled up in Feinstein’s eyes. “When will it be over? When will you leave me alone?”

  Otterman shrugged. “You’re only on our watch list, it’s not as if you’re one of our quarterlies. If you behave and don’t write any more silly letters, you could be off the watch list in three years or so.”

  Feinstein shook his head and wiped his eyes. “It’s not fair,” he sobbed.

  “Son,” said Otterman, standing up and straightening the creases of his black suit pants, “life isn’t fair.” He walked out of the hotel, leaving Feinstein alone with his tears. Otterman had two more visits to make before midday.

  The chambermaid knocked nervously on the door. “Mr O’Brien?” she called. There was no answer so she knocked louder. She knew that Damien O’Brien tended to arrive back at the hotel in the early hours of the morning and stayed in bed late, and she knew better than to barge in unannounced. On one occasion she’d used her pass key and walked in to find him sprawled naked on the bed, an empty bottle of whisky in his hand, fast asleep and snoring like a freight train. It wasn’t an experience she cared to repeat.

  “Mr O’Brien!” she shouted, and used her key to rap on the door. “Housekeeping!” She looked at her watch. It was well past the time when he normally left for work, so perhaps he had left the Do Not Disturb sign on his doorhandle by mistake. She slid her key in the lock and turned it gingerly, placing her ear against the wood and listening for any sound. “Housekeeping, Mr O’Brien,” she repeated. The curtains were drawn but they were old and threadbare and enough light seeped in for her to see without switching the lights on.

  She stepped into the room, a clean sheet and towel draped over one arm, and called out again, just in case he was in the bathroom. She gasped when she saw the feet sticking out from behind the bed, thinking that he was drunk again and that he’d fallen onto the floor. For the first time she noticed a buzzing noise, the sound an alarm clock might make if it was on a low setting. She walked further into the room and peered nervously around the bed. “Mr O’Brien?” she said, her voice trembling. She realised with a jolt that there were two pairs of legs, white and hairy, tied at the ankles. She dropped the sheet and towel as her hands flew to her mouth and she backed away, her breath coming in small, forced, gasps.

  She ran down the stairs to reception and got the day manager, who picked up a baseball bat which he kept behind his desk. He held it in both hands as he went into the room, switching the light on and calling out the guest’s name. The manager had been in the hotel business a long time, and he knew that people did strange things in hotel rooms: they tied each other up, they took drugs, they did things to each other they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do in their own homes. He’d once found a woman swathed in polythene and tied spreadeagled to a bed after her boyfriend had collapsed in the bathroom with a heart attack. It would take a lot to surprise the manager. The buzzing noise got louder as he got closer to the end of the bed. He used his bat to gingerly prod one of the feet. There was no reaction so he stepped up to the window where he could look down on both bodies. They were men – big, heavy men – bound and gagged. There was blood, a lot of blood, and the manager could see several bullet wounds, gaping holes in the chests and heads. Flies buzzed around the wounds, feeding on the still-wet blood.

  Howard drove home from the AA meeting to pack. If the snipers were indeed based on the East Coast it would be some time before he would be back in Phoenix. Lisa was in the kitchen, chopping herbs with a large knife and reading from a cookbook. “Home for lunch?” she said.

  “I wish,” he said. He explained that he was flying to New York and that for the foreseeable future he would be working with the Counter-Terrorism section.

  “Oh God,” she sighed, “what about dinner tonight?”

  “I’m sorry, Lisa, you’ll have to handle it without me.”

  “But Cole, this has been planned for weeks!” She threw the knife down on the chopping block and stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing. “You’ll just have to tell them you can’t go!” Howard laughed, amused at her defiance. Only the daughter of Theodore Clayton would think of standing up to the FBI. His reaction only made her all the more angry. “You can fly out tomorrow,” she said, “A few hours won’t make a difference.”

  “It’s an important case, honey, and a few hours might make all the difference. It’s the case your father has been helping me with.” Howard knew that invoking her father’s name was his best chance of defusing her anger.

  Lisa shook her head, took off her apron and threw it down on top of the knife. “Cole, I don’t know why I put up with this,” she said.

  “It’s my job,” he said, lamely.

  “Well, it needn’t be,” she said. “You could accept the job Daddy keeps offering. Head of Security at Clayton Electronics would be a great career move. It would pay much more than the Bureau gives you. And you wouldn’t be sent off to the other side of the country at a minute’s notice.” Howard held his hands up in surrender. It was an argument they’d had many times, and it was one he’d never managed to win. “And it would mean the children would get to see more of their father,” she pressed.

  “I have to pack,” said Howard, and he beat a hasty retreat. Lisa followed him up the stairs and stood behind him as he grabbed clean shirts from his wardrobe and dropped them into an overnight bag.

  “How long will you be away?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

  “I’ve no idea,” he said over his shoulder. He had the uneasy feeling that if he looked her in the eye he’d be turned to stone on the spot.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re achieving by selling your soul to the FBI,” she said.

  “Better the devil I know . . .” muttered Howard.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, her voice hard and accusing. “Are you saying that Daddy’s the devil, is that what you’re implying?”

  Howard zipped his bag closed. “It’s an expression, Lisa, that’s all. I mean that FBI work is what I do, it’s what I do well. I don’t want to be a lapdog for the great Theodore Clayton. I don’t want him to own me.”

  “Own you?” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “Who paid for this house? The car? You think we could live like this if it wasn’t for my father’s money? If it wasn’t for my father you’d still be buried in the Surveillance Department. It’s my father you owe, not the Bureau. Sometimes I think you forget where your loyalties should lie.”

  Howard froze and for several seconds he stared at her, unable to b
elieve the cruelty in her voice. “Thank you, Lisa,” he said softly. “Thank you for that.”

  He walked by her, down the stairs and out of the front door. Part of him hoped that she’d run after him or call him back, but he wasn’t surprised when she let him go without a word. As he drove away, he could feel her sullen anger, sitting over the house like a storm cloud waiting to break.

  It was a hot day and Joker turned up the air-conditioning in the rented Chevrolet Lumina. It was a big, comfortable American car and Joker enjoyed the way it handled. It had been a long time since he’d been at the wheel of a car and he’d forgotten the sheer pleasure it gave him to drive down an open road at speed. His eyes flicked to the speedometer and he braked to keep within the 55 mph speed limit. From his jacket pocket he took a green pack of Wrigley’s chewing-gum and unwrapped it with his left hand before popping the gum into his mouth. He’d picked up a bottle of whisky from a liquor store and had a couple of slugs for breakfast, and if he was unlucky enough to be pulled in by a cop it would be better to smell of spearmint than whisky.

  His side still ached where he’d been kicked and when he’d woken up that morning it was to find the flesh a vibrant shade of green. Luckily, it seemed there was nothing broken, but it was going to be painful for some time. The dashboard clock read 13:30. Joker had been up since 8 a.m. and an hour later he’d visited the cuttings library of the Washington Post. He’d asked to see the papers for the week when Pete Manyon had been killed and had drunk a styrofoam cup of black coffee as he’d read the articles detailing the discovery of the body, its identification, and its eventual export back to the United Kingdom. In none of the papers did the story merit more than a dozen paragraphs. Joker had been surprised to find out how violent a city Washington was. He’d assumed that because it was the political heart of the country, it would be one of the safer places to be, but in fact it was the murder capital of the United States with drive-by killings and torture regular occurrences and usually drug-related. When Manyon’s body was first discovered, the police had assumed that he had been involved in the drugs trade because of the way he had been tortured. Practically skinned alive, the paper said, and suggested it had been the work of one of the city’s vicious Jamaican gangs. His fingers had been systematically cut off with a pair of bolt cutters or a very sharp knife and he had been castrated. There were rope burns on his wrists and ankles. According to the paper, Manyon had died from loss of blood.

  In the UK such a killing would have been front page news but in the Washington paper it was tucked inside and was one of five murders reported that day. There had been a suggestion from one of the Homicide detectives investigating the case that the fingers had been removed to hinder identification, but Joker knew that wasn’t why Manyon had been mutilated. The first article had carried a photograph of Manyon’s face, no doubt cosmetically tidied up by some helpful undertaker, and several days later a motel manager had come forward saying that one of his guests had disappeared leaving his clothes, and passport, behind. The passport photograph matched the face of the man in the morgue, and Pete Manyon was identified as John Ballantine, a life insurance salesman from Bristol, England, who was on an extended vacation.

  The last article appeared ten days after the body had been discovered and detailed the arrival in Washington of Ballantine’s sister and how she had flown back to England with the body. There were no further stories, and Joker assumed that the murder had remained on the Washington police’s unsolved list. It hadn’t been hard for Joker to imagine what Manyon had gone through during the hours he’d been tortured. He’d been in the farmhouse in Northern Ireland when Mary Hennessy had gone to work on Mick Newmarch. Joker rubbed his left wrist as he drove. It still bore the scars he’d made trying to wrench himself free from the handcuffs Hennessy had used to secure him to the radiator. Newmarch had told them everything, of course, no amount of training or spirit could withstand the sort of things Hennessy did with her knife. Joker would never forget Newmarch’s screams, nor the look of pleasure, almost rapture, on Mary Hennessy’s face as she’d used the blade.

  A horn sounded behind him like the warning cry of some prehistoric monster and Joker realised he’d been drifting across the lanes of the highway. A huge truck roared by, the name of a meat packer on the side, its massive wheels only inches from his door. His knuckles were almost white, so hard had he been gripping the steering wheel, and he could feel sweat dribbling down his back despite the cold air streaming from the air-conditioning.

  The newspaper library also had copies of every telephone directory in the United States, and Joker had gone through the ones for the Washington area, writing down the numbers of all the aircraft leasing companies, flying schools and local airlines. There was no home listing for a Patrick Farrell in the Washington City directory so he widened his search to the surrounding areas: Maryland, Laurel, Anne Arundel, Montgomery and the Greater Baltimore area to the north, and Arlington, Fairfax and Prince Georges to the south. He found only one P. Farrell and that was in a town called Laurel, about midway between Washington and Baltimore. In the Montgomery County Yellow Pages he found a Farrell Aviation listed and he’d smiled to himself, unable to believe his luck. If the surname hadn’t been used in the company name he’d have had to call round about three dozen aviation firms. There was a pay phone in the lobby of the Washington Post and he’d used it to call the company. A bored-sounding secretary had told him that there were two Patrick Farrells, father and son, the father owned the company, the son ran it. She’d given Joker directions to a small airfield some twenty miles north-east of Washington.

  As he drove to the airfield, Joker wondered if it was the father or the son that Matthew Bailey had contacted. There was no way of knowing. The son would be nearer Bailey’s age, but the father was more likely to have emigrated to the States from Ireland, giving him stronger connections with the IRA. He was going to have to play it by ear.

  In the trunk of the rental car was Joker’s suitcase. He’d checked out of the Washington motel that morning and was planning to find a new place closer to Laurel. He had no definite plan as he drove along the Interstate 95, other than to check out the company and maybe sit outside for a while, on the off-chance that Bailey visited. He’d used the Visa card to buy a pair of powerful binoculars and they were in a plastic carrier-bag on the back seat.

  The airfield was difficult to find – there were no signposts and eventually Joker had to ask for directions at a filling station. It was surrounded by trees so Joker didn’t see it until he was virtually on top of it. It turned out to be little more than a grass strip with a few hangars and a single-storey brick building on which there was a sign which said Farrell Aviation and a logo of a green propeller with a hawk above it. A line of small planes faced the grass landing strip, many of them with covers over their cowlings as if they didn’t get flown much. The asphalt road Joker was on wound through the trees and curved behind the hangars before widening out into a large area in front of the Farrell Aviation building where several cars were parked. Joker slowed his car down and pulled up in front of a hangar which had a large ‘For Rent’ sign on the door with the telephone number of a Baltimore real estate company. A bearded man in blue overalls appeared from the neighbouring hangar, wiping his hands on a rag. He stood looking at Joker for a second or two and then walked over. Joker got out of his car and stood looking up at the hangar.

  “You interested?” the man said. His voice was laconic, almost sleepy, but his eyes were sharp and alert.

  “Could be,” answered Joker, “but not for me, my brother-in-law services small planes, he’s looking for a base near Baltimore.”

  “You’re English, right?” said the man.

  Joker nodded. “Yeah, my sister married a guy from Boston. You get much business here?”

  The man shrugged. “Not really, not what you’d call passing trade. There’s no Flight Service Station here, and no fuel. You have to pull your own business in, pretty much. What sort of work does your brot
her-in-law do?”

  “Small planes, Cessnas mostly. He buys up wrecks, does them up and sells them. There’s always a market for 152s and 172s.”

  “Oh sure,” the man agreed.

  “You run your own business?” Joker asked.

  “Yeah, routine servicing mainly. I have my regulars and there’s a small flying club based here. We used to have a flying school but they closed.”

  “What about Farrell? They do okay?”

  The man nodded. “Leasing, mainly. They own most of the hangars here. They do an eye-in-the-sky service for a few radio stations – you know, watching the traffic jams, stuff like that. And they do some film and television work. They do okay.”

  “Farrell? That’s an Irish name, right?”

  “Pat’s Irish all right,” said the man. “He’s even painted green stripes on most of his planes.”

  Joker took a pen from his jacket pocket and wrote down the name of the company handling the leasing of the empty hangar. “I’ll pass this on to my brother-in-law,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”

  “Sure, hope you decide to move in. It’d be good to have fresh faces around.”

  The man walked back to his hangar while Joker climbed back into his car. He drove slowly down the road and through the trees. There were many other things he wanted to ask the man, but he knew that he would be pushing his luck if he’d prolonged the conversation – it wouldn’t take much to set alarm bells ringing over at the Farrell building.

  A few hundred yards before the asphalt road joined the main highway, Joker saw a track which wound into the trees and he stopped for a closer look. It appeared to be overgrown and hadn’t been used in a while. There was no-one around so he turned off the road and drove cautiously down the track. When he was sure he was far enough away from the road so that he couldn’t be seen, he stopped the car. He took his binoculars from the back seat and his bottle of whisky from the trunk, and walked through the trees. He walked for half a mile or so until he reached a spot where he could see the front of the Farrell building in the distance, but remain well hidden from the airfield. He dropped down next to a wide chestnut tree and sat with his back propped up against it. His view was restricted by the trees between him and the airfield but he could see the cars parked in front of the building, and the main entrance. He focused the binoculars on the car number plates and found that he could read them easily, so he knew he’d have no problem seeing the face of anyone who went into or came out of the building. He uncapped the whisky bottle and drank deeply. He might be in for a long wait, but he had nowhere else to go.