by Matt Hilton
It was mundane employment, but employment all the same.
I didn’t look like a nightwatchman. I could pass as a worker on his way home from a late shift, so if the burglars happened to notice me wandering around the streets it wouldn’t concern them too much. They’d only need wait for me – a potential witness – to leave the immediate area and they could be in and out of Redmond’s Electrical Supplies as quickly as they had on those two previous occasions. That’s if they ever turned up, but it looked like another no show was on the cards. I was starting to think that Redmond’s fears were unwarranted, and the thieves knew that three times was the charm that would get them captured and had moved on to robbing someplace else.
So I was a little surprised when my cell phone vibrated in my breast pocket.
‘They’re here?’ I asked without checking that it was Rink on the other end.
‘Nope,’ Rink said. ‘These guys are on foot, and I doubt they intend carrying away the appliances on their shoulders.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ It wasn’t unknown for small groups of guys to wander through the neighbourhood on their way home from the bars across town.
‘They’re stalking a couple of old folks,’ Rink said. He didn’t elaborate and didn’t need to.
‘Where?’
‘Comin’ your way, brother.’
‘How many?’
‘Four. I’m out of my car and on their tails.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m heading back to you.’
‘Best be quick, they’re making a move now.’
Rink cut the call.
I started running.
This was more the kind of service to law enforcement I preferred.
My walk had taken me around two corners of the block, and though it would take me no more than thirty seconds to run back, it was plenty of time for a group of muggers to pounce. If it weren’t for the fact that Rink was closer, I would have been more concerned.
I slowed at the final corner, approaching it at a quick walk. At the last moment I actually came to a full stop, hidden from view. I could hear muffled voices. Some were harsh and commanding, others meek and pleading. Obviously Rink hadn’t arrived on the scene yet. Probably waiting for me to show. I rounded the corner, keeping my head down and my hands in my pockets: just an ordinary guy on his way home. I pretended not to notice the tableau playing out twenty feet away, but was taking in the details in a quick sweep.
There were four men, as Rink had said. Three of them stood in a semi-circle, hemming in the fourth man, who had cornered an elderly couple in the recessed doorway of a building. The three were actively intimidating the old couple while the other man took their possessions from them. No hint of a weapon. Perhaps the quartet hadn’t deemed it necessary to show one when the threat of violence was enough.
The thug nearest me noticed my approach.
He was a tall guy with a spray of acne across his chin, maybe in his mid-twenties and by the look of things the eldest in the group of muggers. I wondered if he was the leader. Not that it mattered. He would be the first to go down if I had my way. The tall guy knocked elbows with the man nearest him, and both turned to me. The second man gave me a hard look, flicking his head and ordering me to cross the road. I played dumb and continued towards them.
‘Hey, dickweed,’ the skinny one said, ‘keep fucking moving.’
I only then lifted my head and feigned noticing them for the first time. I took my hands out of my pockets quickly, showing them my empty palms. By then I was barely ten feet from them.
I caught a beseeching look from the old man trapped in the doorway. He had a protective arm across his wife’s body, trying to stop the gang from taking a ring off her finger. I couldn’t spare him a look of support for fear those blocking me noticed. Instead I forced a fearful expression on my face, made a garbled apology and began to divert away from the group.
Just then I noticed Rink loom into view as if he’d materialised out of nowhere.
He gave no warning as he shot a stiffened palm into the ear of the third man in the semi-circle. His strike was blindingly fast, and the mugger was already on the way to the floor before he had time to groan. The man who’d flicked his head at me heard his pal go down and turned towards Rink with a look of surprise, just in time to catch Rink’s head-butt on the bridge of his nose. He too began a graceless fall to the sidewalk.
In the meantime I wasn’t standing idle.
I adjusted direction with a subtle pivot of my feet and was within the tall guy’s reach before he thought to ward me off. I snapped the ‘V’ of my thumb and index finger into his throat with enough force to make him gag then, before he could suck in his next inhalation, closed my fist around his windpipe. I felt the cartilage popping. I gave him a brief squeeze, and it was all it took to drop him on his arse, thinking he was dying.
The man trying to take the old woman’s wedding ring was so intent on his task he was unaware that people other than his gang now surrounded him. Rink glanced at me, and I shrugged, allowed him to go for it.
Rink grasped the collar of the man’s jacket and yanked backwards, where a foot sweep took him entirely off balance. The mugger fell on his back, becoming entangled with the limbs of his pals. Rink stood over them all, his features a mask of disdain while I turned to check on the elderly couple.
‘Let’s get you out of the way,’ I said to them.
‘They’ve got my wallet and watch,’ the old man croaked, ‘and my wife’s necklace.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get them back for you,’ I promised, as I steered the couple out of the doorway and towards the corner. ‘Are you OK, did they hurt you?’
‘We’re OK, just shaken up. I thought they were going to . . .’ The old man looked horrified at the prospect of what might have been. Then his look was aimed at his wife, ashamed that he hadn’t done more to protect her.
‘The important thing is that you’re both all right. You don’t have to worry about these young punks anymore.’ I quickly checked what was going on. The four muggers had rearranged their positions so that they were in an orderly line on the ground. One of them was unconscious – the first guy to be hit – and was blissfully unaware of his friends sitting alongside him. One of them was trying to staunch the blood flowing from his nostrils, the next attempting to straighten out the kink in his trachea, while the uninjured man was the only one capable of showing any defiance. His ballsy attitude lasted only until Rink stepped in and slapped his mouth shut. Even from the corner, and under dim street lighting, I could see a bruise pop out on his jaw. The tough guy mugger was suddenly a weeping overgrown brat. Rink barely gave him any notice as he brought out his cell phone and hit 911.
I kept an eye on the group, but also reassured the old couple that they were safe.
‘Thank you,’ the old woman said. She was a short, wide-hipped lady, with grey curly hair. Reminded me of my mother, albeit she’d have easily been ten years older.
‘No problem,’ I said.
‘Really, son,’ the old man said. ‘You have my gratitude. If you and your friend hadn’t come along I don’t know what I’d have done.’
‘You did the best thing possible in not giving them any problems. If you’d tried to fight they’d have hurt you. All’s well that ends well, right?’ I gave him a surreptitious wink.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said and wanted to shake my hand. It was unwise to compromise myself by accepting his handshake, but Rink had everything under control. He’d finished his phone call, summoned the cops to clear things up, and was now standing over the group, willing them to make a false move. None of them took up the challenge, and little wonder. Rink’s big, built like a pro fighter. He’s also mean-looking when he sets his jaw so tightly that an old knife scar on his chin practically glows against his tawny skin.
I approached. ‘Cops on their way?’
‘Yup.’ Rink wasn’t amused. ‘We’re going to be tied up giving statements because of these assholes.’
‘At least it gets us out of this bloody cold,’ I said. ‘And with the police activity there’s no way the thieves will try their luck at Redmond’s tonight.’
‘Then it’ll only mean we’ll be back here again next week.’ Rink made sure that the muggers – the conscious ones – heard him. By the way they hung their heads they wouldn’t be plying their trade around this neighbourhood again.
My run, followed by the brief scuffle, had done me a world of good. I was feeling much warmer. And, unless the warehouse thieves were more reckless than I gave them credit for, our work was probably done. Not a bad result in my estimation. But still, I was ready for a job that I couldn’t complete in first gear. The slight buzz of adrenalin I’d experienced from kicking the muggers’ arses only made me crave it all the more. Who knew that things would grow more exciting within the next few days?
4
Billie Womack couldn’t concentrate on her art.
After her visit from the ATF agents she’d tried to occupy her thoughts with carting her canvas and materials inside and up to the attic room she’d converted into a studio. She’d set the unfinished painting of Baker’s Hole and the surrounding mountains on the easel, inserted a CD in the music system, and then perched herself at the ready to add new layers to her work in progress. However the brush had yet to be dipped in the acrylic paint. She merely stared at the ochre shapes on the canvas, unable to focus on them, let alone bring them to life. The bold red slash she’d earlier applied was the only thing to catch and hold her attention, even if for only brief and fleeting moments.
Finally she stood up and walked to the CD player positioned on a windowsill. The music CD – old-school jazz – had played out without her taking in any of the tunes and was now part of the way through its second revolution. Billie turned it off. The silence was noisier than when the soft strains had filtered unnoticed through her subconscious. She rubbed a hand over her face, and swore softly, then peered out of the window, the view allowing her to see all the way across the lake where her gaze settled on the distant shore. Momentarily she thought she saw a flash of red dashing along the shoreline below the trees, and she blinked in confusion, her pulse responding to the stimulus. It took her another moment to realise that the colour from the painting had etched its memory in her retina and she was only experiencing a ghost image.
A poor metaphor, she thought.
She turned from the window and left her studio, making her way downstairs to the kitchen where she immediately headed for the fridge. Inside was a bottle of wine she’d opened in celebration at selling her most recent work of art to a collector from Seattle. She poured wine into a tumbler she found resting on the drainer next to the sink. Any other time she’d have chosen a more suitable glass, but what the hell! This wasn’t a celebratory drink; she only needed the alcohol. After swallowing the wine in two long gulps she reached again for the bottle, but forewent the glass and elected to carry the bottle with her as she went outside and sat on the chair on her porch.
Evening was descending.
It was cold out on the porch and luckily she had been so distracted that she hadn’t taken off her coat from earlier. She pulled up her collar and snuggled down in the rocking chair, pulling her feet up under her. She drank directly from the bottle.
Eighty million dollars.
Billie couldn’t visualise what such a figure amounted to if the dollars were stacked one on top of the other. But Agent Cooper hadn’t actually said that Richard Womack had stolen such a large amount in cash, but that he’d siphoned it off to some untraceable account – maybe many accounts – somewhere offshore. Such an unimaginable amount of money gave credence to the fact that Richard had staged his own death, allowing him to disappear into obscurity from where he could enjoy his ill-gotten wealth. According to Cooper, Richard had sacrificed his own daughter in his plot to disappear without a trace.
The ATF agent was wrong.
Billie and Richard’s divorce had been acrimonious. By the end there were only two aspects of their marriage that they could agree on: they had grown to hate each other, but they both loved their daughter. Despite Richard being narcissistic, a conceited son of a bitch and a philanderer, Billie had never doubted his love for Nicola. He’d been petitioning for full custody for Christ’s sake! Why would he do that if only to murder her during his disappearing trick? Cooper had a singular take on things: by sacrificing his beloved daughter it added more plausibility to his own supposed death. Richard had proven to be both incredibly manipulative and supremely self-motivated when it came to embezzling the multi-million dollar sum, to a point where he would not wish to hand any of it away, not even to his child. Agent Cooper believed that Richard Womack was a sociopath, with no love for anyone but himself and his needs.
Nicola had been killed, that fact wasn’t in dispute. She’d been stuck in the car when it went over the bridge, but it had nothing to do with Richard wanting a clean break so he could keep all the money to himself. Why would he need to murder his daughter, Billie asked the agent, when he could as easily have deposited her back with Billie and then staged his death on the return journey?
Something troubled Billie more than Agent Cooper’s insistence that Richard was behind Nicola’s death. It wasn’t his suggestion that Richard might actually have survived his plunge into the torrential river. The agent was concerned that those whom Richard had stolen from might also have come to the same conclusion. The way Cooper saw things, she could be paid a visit by people who didn’t have the same hopes for her well-being as the ATF did.
Billie dipped her hand in her coat pocket and pulled out the card Cooper had handed her.
‘Joe Hunter,’ she read out loud. On the reverse of the card were the handwritten name and a telephone number. Billie turned it over. As she’d expected, Agent Cooper’s details were printed on the front. He’d suggested that she contact Hunter in the event that his skills might prove helpful.
She’d asked who Joe Hunter was. ‘Is he an ATF agent like you?’
‘No. He’s a private operator.’
‘A bodyguard?’
‘Among other things,’ Cooper had said. He’d glanced back at the house to where Monaghan sat in the sedan car. ‘Look. I’m going out on a limb here. I wouldn’t ordinarily hand out the details of a private operator like this, particularly when you’d expect my agency to offer you any protection necessary. But, you must understand, uh, Billie, that there are some of my colleagues who think that you are complicit in your ex-husband’s crimes and that you should be brought in for questioning.’ He’d warded off her concerned look. ‘I don’t think that, but there are some that do. Now, hopefully I’m way off mark and trouble will never come to your door, but in the event that it does, well . . .’ He’d indicated the card in her hand. ‘Call Joe Hunter.’
‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Agent Cooper.’
Cooper had pursed his mouth in confusion.
‘You didn’t drive all the way out here on the off chance that something might happen. You expect something to happen.’
Again Cooper glanced back at his colleague. He’d weighed the pros and cons of telling her the truth. Finally, he’d decided that forewarned was forearmed, and it was after all his purpose for driving out into the boonies. ‘I’m tasked with finding your ex-husband – if he’s still alive – and recovering the money that he stole. But it has come to my attention that I’m not the only one looking. One of the accounts that Richard tapped to the tune of almost thirty million dollars was in the name of a shell corporation belonging to some pretty dangerous individuals. We’ve started another investigation into those behind Procrylon Inc., and through our endeavours discovered that they are making enquiries of their own. An ATF agent looking into Procrylon was recently compromised, and subsequently turned up dead. We’ve no evidence to say those behind Procrylon murdered my colleague, but I’d be a fool to ignore what common sense tells me. If they’re prepared to murder a federal agent, then they won�
��t shy away from hurting others to get what they want. It’s why I fear that you might become a target.’
‘But I don’t know anything.’
‘I have your word on that, Billie, but that’s all they’ll have too. I’m willing to take it at face value, but they might not be as accommodating.’
Billie snapped the card against her thigh, and then put it away in her pocket.
Cooper was most likely scaremongering. Despite his reassurances that he believed she knew nothing about the theft or Richard’s disappearance, his words were thinly veiled. He thought that she was involved. Perhaps not willingly, but how could her Richard have conducted his criminal affairs without her at least suspecting something? Cooper intended instilling panic in her in the hope that she’d try to contact her exhusband and lead the ATF to him.
Or was that paranoia speaking?
What if Cooper’s intentions were honourable after all and she did indeed require protection from the men hunting Richard?
She took out the card again and stared long and hard at it.
5
‘Well, brother. I vote we call it a night.’
Rink was at the wheel of his Porsche, but this time I was sitting in the warmth alongside him.
‘Only complete idiots would try another burglary now,’ I said by way of agreement.
‘Let’s roll.’ He took off so quickly I’d bet that twin strips of rubber were etched on the road.
The cops had been and gone, taking the bunch of muggers with them; some of them detouring via an emergency room so the thugs could have their wounds tended. The elderly couple, Gino and Muriel Bidinotto, had given their statements and again profusely thanked Rink and me for intervening on their behalf, before they were escorted home by a duo of uniformed officers. A detective I’d come across before, Holker, had taken down our version of events. Holker didn’t exactly have any love for me – though he did owe me for helping clear up a previous homicide investigation of his – but he had begrudgingly thanked us for our public-spirited work then sent us off with a gruff warning about curbing our excessive use of force. Personally, I thought that the gang had gotten off lightly. Then again, he could have been referring to the last time we’d worked together. Holker was the kind who wasn’t very sympathetic to my cause; when pushed on it he’d said, ‘Hunter, you know where “sympathy” lies in the dictionary, don’t you? Right between “shit” and “syphilis”.’