Ghosts

by Matt Rogers

  Gates signalled to the marero, and the gangster tucked the revolver back into his waistband.

  But he seethed with barely suppressed rage.

  Low-level gangsters don’t make it very far by subduing their emotions. Which ends up getting them killed a whole lot sooner anyway, and perpetuates the vicious cycle.

  Slater eyed the revolvers with the curious gaze of a man who doesn’t see guns very often. He said, ‘Your guys can just carry those around out here? How’s that work?’

  Gates said, ‘We’re untouchable. Helps having a DA and a sheriff on the payroll.’

  He winked at them.

  Hook, line and sinker, King thought.

  Gates said, ‘So we’re good to go?’

  King nodded. ‘We’re good.’

  ‘Give me your number first,’ Gates said. ‘I want to be able to contact you.’

  King pulled the burner phone from his pocket, fed Gates the number, and waited for Gates to dial. King’s phone screen flared up, proving the number’s authenticity.

  Gates nodded his approval.

  ‘Melanie,’ Gates called.

  She stepped out of an en suite bathroom, clutching a second Long Island Iced Tea, already half-finished. Her eyes were cloudy and she swayed from side to side. Gates had loaded her up for the night ahead. Probably sprinkled a double serving of something special in her second drink.

  She shook the dewy glass at King and Slater and smiled. ‘One for the road.’

  They smiled back.

  It took all their willpower.

  But then the performance was largely over, and the four mareros led the trio out to the alleyway through a discreet corridor connected to the back room. The limo was already idling out front — King marvelled at Gates’ expediency. It was long and black and indistinguishable from the fleets that trawled the Strip. The gangster without the face tats got behind the wheel — a makeshift chauffeur — and the other three piled into the rear compartment.

  Melanie followed, and King and Slater ducked in last.

  There was enough space to stretch out, so the three mareros bunched together on the rear seats, but they all took their revolvers out and rested them on their laps in case the guests got any ideas. Melanie sat between King and Slater, close to the door, and King poured himself a glass of expensive champagne from the mini-bar for theatrics’ sake.

  He sipped at it, and Melanie flirted with them, and they flirted back.

  She kicked her heels off, stretched out across the upholstery, and put a hand on King’s thigh.

  He winced internally, but couldn’t show it.

  The driver reversed out of the laneway and navigated back onto West Desert Inn Road, a mirror image of the journey King and Slater had taken to Chinatown. King spotted the Spring Mountain gravel pit pass them on the left, and with it the confirmation that they were deep in the privacy of an uninhabited industrial zone, late at night.

  He met Slater’s gaze over the top of Melanie’s head, and gave an imperceptible nod.

  Now.

  17

  Slater sat forward and openly stared at the mareros.

  They stared right back. They tightened their grips on the revolvers.

  Slater put all his attention on the one in the middle and said, ‘Why don’t you stare harder, pendejo?’

  ‘What the fuck—’ the guy started, eyes lighting up with anger.

  Before he could threaten them, Slater raised his voice, addressing the whole cabin. ‘You know what? I’m done with this. Pull over.’

  Through the open partition, the driver twisted in his seat. ‘What?’

  ‘Pull over. Slow down.’

  King added, ‘You heard him. We’re done. Slow down!’

  He shouted the last sentence, his voice booming in the confined space.

  Chaos.

  The three mareros in the back started shouting all at once, a couple of them shaking their guns. Melanie went rigid and the blood drained completely from her face.

  Out of the corner of his eye, King saw a vein pulsating in her neck, her heart rate through the roof.

  Adding to the uproar, King said to her, ‘Did you hear? We don’t want you anymore. Get out.’

  She looked up at him, fear on her face. ‘Huh?’

  The mareros kept shouting.

  Slater shouted back at them, his tone frantic.

  It was all unintelligible.

  Amidst the explosion of noise, the driver slowed the limo to a crawl and pulled onto the shoulder, more to sort out the commotion than to honour the clients’ request.

  King jumped at the opportunity. He reached out and threw the door open, then grabbed Melanie’s wrist and made to throw her out of the car.

  ‘Hey!’ she screamed.

  The driver stamped on the brakes.

  The limo slowed to a crawl.

  As gently as he could, King pushed her out.

  She landed on her feet and staggered barefoot away from the limo, regressing to a silhouette in seconds. One of the mareros screamed a command at the driver, who obeyed. The guy stamped on the accelerator again and the momentum of the limo picking up speed swung the door shut.

  As soon as it was closed the gangster in the middle leapt out of his seat and shoved the barrel of his revolver against the side of Slater’s head.

  Slater froze and switched gears. He started to shake.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking. That was a mistake—’

  His words quite literally fell on deaf ears. The mareros were shouting and cursing and bickering between each other, in a furious debate as to how to proceed. Gates’ best worker had just been disrespected. Demonstrations had to be made. Examples had to be set. Amidst the furore, the other two thugs seesawed their way across the rear compartment and pinned King in his seat with their gun barrels — one on each side of his chest.

  They shouted at him in Spanish, spit spraying his face.

  He made himself look scared, which took some effort.

  The barrel was tight against Slater’s skull. The marero ground it against the flesh by twisting it left and right, drawing blood. Slater turned his head slightly to see out the windshield, and watched the driver veer off the road into the outskirts of the colossal property containing the two gravel pits. There were industrial outbuildings and rows of heavy mining equipment all over the place. The driver parked the limo in the shadows beside a handful of massive bulldozers. He was out of the vehicle before it had even come to rest, throwing the door open and skirting round to open up the rear compartment. The three mareros within started screaming again, gesticulating wildly for King and Slater to get out.

  Slater went first.

  The barrel stayed firm against his head as the gangster followed him out.

  It was a hot night. Sweat beaded in the small of his back as he took a gulp of air. King came out next, two guns against his back. The gangster beside Slater shoved him hard toward the bulldozers. It was a weak push. He could have stayed right where he was, but he went along with it. He staggered to the right, away from the limo.

  King followed suit.

  Slater came to a stop first and assessed the situation. He cast his gaze over what road he could see outside the mining pit. The asphalt trailed away toward the Strip, empty and sparsely lit.

  No passing traffic.

  No Melanie.

  They’d driven for maybe thirty seconds after King had forced her out of the car, but that was enough to put her out of sight.

  Maybe not out of earshot, but that didn’t matter.

  Everyone in the vicinity would hear what came next.

  But no one would see it.

  King stumbled to a halt beside Slater, one of the tattooed gangsters skewering the revolver into his chest. The marero was all the way up in his face, still shouting. Slater was pretty sure they weren’t actually going to follow through with the threats. If he and King played along, they’d live. Slightly humiliated, maybe roughed up by a few blows, but not outright
executed.

  Didn’t matter.

  King had done a remarkable job of working the circumstances to create maximum confusion.

  King said, ‘Can she see us?’

  Slater said, ‘No.’

  King just ripped the revolver right out of the guy’s hand, breaking fingers in the process. He shot the gangbanger in the face, pushed his falling body aside and fired three more shots at a furious pace.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  The mareros fell, one by one, like macabre dominoes.

  Not a single one of them had managed to raise a gun in response.

  King threw the revolver on the body of the first gangbanger and walked away.

  Slater followed.

  They got in the limo and reversed out of the lot and drove away.

  Neither looked back.

  18

  Alexis was out front when they pulled into the estate.

  She sat on a broad outdoor chair, knees curled up to her chest, arms looped around them. Slater knew she’d been stargazing. She did it every night. No phone, no thought, just a rare bout of stillness to end a predictably chaotic day. She said it re-energised her, centred her for the exertion that would come tomorrow.

  She was still getting used to the upheaval of her life.

  Quietly, he thought she was handling it better than anyone he’d ever known.

  They pulled up to the closed roller door of the triple-garage and got out together.

  Alexis stared. ‘The Bentley sure looks different.’

  Slater said, ‘We’re going back tomorrow. To pick it up, and send a message.’

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  They told her. There was no shame. No guilt. No skirting around the cold hard facts. She was a civilian, yes, but she’d always known who Slater was. What he was. She never would have entered this world if she needed to whitewash the story she told herself each day.

  Her life partner was a killer.

  And she still trusted him completely.

  That took a rare kind of objectivity.

  She sat back and squeezed her legs tighter against her chest and soaked in the tale.

  She said, ‘Why did you kill them if you knew you weren’t really in danger?’

  ‘They weren’t very polite,’ King said. ‘And that was the plan all along. Strip Gates of his muscle. I spotted an opening when we were in the club and went for it. I knew he’d overcompensate. Four guys? One with a gun would have been enough. But he needed to show off, and now he’s exposed.’

  ‘I thought you two said you weren’t going to smash heads together.’

  ‘We weren’t,’ King said. ‘Not at Wan’s. Not in front of Gates.’

  ‘I think he might figure out it was you,’ she said. ‘I mean, he’s not Sherlock Holmes but, you know, something tells me he’ll put it together…’

  ‘No he won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we’re going to go back and give him a piece of our mind.’

  She threw her arms up. ‘You’re the brains, I guess. But this might be the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.’

  Slater said, ‘We’re going to ask him why we’re getting caught in the crossfire of his little street war with a rival gang. We’re going to be outraged and indignant.’

  She lowered her hands and mulled it over. ‘Oh.’

  ‘No witnesses,’ King said. ‘The truth is what we want it to be.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t believe you?’

  ‘He’ll believe us.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘We can’t,’ Slater said. ‘Welcome to our lives.’

  She chewed her lower lip. ‘Let’s go in. Violetta needs to hear this.’

  They entered the house and found Violetta in the kitchen. She’d pulled a bar stool up to the kitchen island, still hunched over the same laptop, still furiously scrolling. The quiet was punctuated by the occasional burst of typing, her fingers flying over the keys.

  She looked up when they walked in, noting the dried blood on the side of Slater’s head. ‘What happened?’

  King explained.

  The same way they’d told Alexis.

  Holding nothing back.

  Violetta paused for longer after they were finished. Calculating, analysing.

  She said, ‘You should have brought Melanie back here. She’s in danger now. She’s going to get interrogated.’

  ‘She’s not in danger,’ King said. ‘Gates is protective of her. And that would have ruined the act.’

  ‘What act?’

  King laid out the foundations of a plan for the following day. Violetta mulled it over.

  She said, ‘That’s good. He’ll believe you.’

  ‘He’ll be angry at first,’ Alexis said. ‘That’s when he’ll be volatile.’

  ‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take,’ Slater said. ‘We could have razed that place to the ground whenever we wanted. But that wouldn’t have solved anything. We need him to get to the big dogs.’

  ‘He’s not a big dog?’ Alexis said.

  Slater shook his head.

  Violetta said, ‘I’m already scouring the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department database for everything they have on Gates. Potential connections in law enforcement, et cetera.’

  ‘This will help, then,’ King said. ‘He gave us information unwittingly.’

  He fed her the line about a District Attorney and a sheriff on the payroll.

  Violetta said, ‘I know who the sheriff is already.’

  King paused. ‘You do?’

  ‘I came across it by chance. I was deep in the LVMPD archives, and there were endless inconsistencies. Details missing. A lot redacted. When I’d finished sorting through it all I realised there was a massive hole in the centre of the puzzle. Like someone had been deliberately wiped from the records.’

  ‘A sheriff that no longer exists?’

  ‘It took some digging. His name is Keith Ray. He exists, but his career is one giant question mark, which is crazy considering he used to be the Clark County Sheriff. That’s a top dog. I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, obviously I worked in black ops my whole life, but when we redact something, it’s untraceable. This was a messy cover-up. The furthest thing from clean. There’s a whole lot of unprofessionalism. It blows my mind how brazen it was.’

  ‘Why did he need it expunged?’ Slater said.

  ‘I’d be guessing,’ Violetta said. ‘But if you put a gun to my head, I’d wager he’s in an unsavoury business now. He can use his connections from his career, but he doesn’t want fresh faces finding out he used to be high up in law enforcement.’

  Slater turned to King. ‘Seen any unsavoury businesses lately?’

  ‘There’s one that comes to mind.’

  King thought of Melanie, dolled up and cloudy-eyed, drugged and boozed into blissful obliviousness.

  He said, ‘And the DA?’

  Violetta went back to the laptop and zoned in for less than a minute. Then she looked up and said, ‘The Clark County District Attorney is a woman named Gloria Kerr. It has to be her. Christ. This is bigger than I thought.’

  ‘Can you tackle that tomorrow?’ King said. ‘We’ll be preoccupied with Gates.’

  Violetta nodded. ‘I think I know what to do.’

  ‘Care to share?’

  ‘I’m still brainstorming. But I think I’ll go straight for the jugular.’

  ‘Will it be risky?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What isn’t?’ King said.

  They shared a brief half-smile.

  It’s a crazy world we’re in, Slater thought.

  Then Alexis piped up.

  ‘There’s got to be a million holes in that cover-up,’ she said. ‘Especially if he truly was the Clark County Sheriff. Most of the force would simply remember him.’

  ‘Which supports my theory that it was a rush job,’ Violetta said. ‘Thrown together haphazardly by a man who thinks he’s above the law.’
r />   ‘I can work with that,’ Alexis said. ‘I’ll get actual details tomorrow.’

  Slater turned to her.

  His first instinct was to shelter her, but he threw it away as the impulse it was. It was ludicrous. She didn’t need protecting. She was a civilian, but he’d been one once. They all had. There’s always a life before … whatever the hell it was they were now. Every day, she put up with the fact that his extracurricular activities involved putting his life on the line.

  He could do the same.

  So instead of, ‘No,’ he said, ‘How?’

  19

  With the limo hidden in the garage and their location untraceable, the night passed without incident.

  King didn’t waver from his night-time routine. He stretched out — more sun salutations to ease the tension of having killed four men an hour previously — then took a handful of supplements containing herbs (Valerian root, chamomile, jujube), immune system support (krill oil, L-Lysine, Vitamin C, Selenium), and minerals (calcium, magnesium, iodine), as well as spirulina and chlorella. Some of them probably worked, and some of them probably didn’t, but it took him seconds to swallow the pills and he’d vowed long ago to try anything to extend his longevity. So far, the philosophy was paying off.

  He sure didn’t feel his age.

  He monitored his own mood, but there was nothing to report. No intrusive thoughts. No paranoia. No uncertainty.

  Just a deep disgust at how a small subsection of the world operated, but that came with every job.

  The next day would bring answers. Some big, some small. Hopefully they’d add up to reveal a solution.

  When he went to the bedroom, Violetta was already there. Sitting up in bed, a pillow against her back, the laptop in her lap. Still scrolling, still typing.

  As King pulled his shirt off, he said, ‘You’re going to impersonate a crime boss, aren’t you?’

  She looked up and stared at him. Her blue eyes blazed. She shut the laptop and put it aside.

  ‘Sometimes I think you can read my mind,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘We think the same. I’m just working with the information we have.’

  ‘I’ll throw money around at one of the casinos,’ she said. ‘I’ll do all the right things. Someone will approach me. If I play it right, Kerr will take the bait.’