by Blake Banner
“And I am in the first stage?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “I guess you’re right. I do find it hard to believe that anybody could be that crazy.”
I sipped my drink and took a long drag of the cigarette. As I let out the smoke I said, “I am not sure that they are crazy, Cyndi. I have known two of them very well. Psychosis is being unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They haven’t got that problem. The big difference with them is that, what for most people would be fantasy, for them, is reality.” I paused, frowning, thinking. “It’s hard to explain. Having somebody killed, triggering a war in which two hundred thousand people die, children are slaughtered or become homeless, families are destroyed…” I shrugged. “To the men and women who constitute Omega, who inhabit that level of power, that kind of inhuman atrocity is their daily bread. It’s not a fantasy. It is their reality.”
I heard the engine of a small bike or a scooter entering the parking lot outside. I pulled the Sig from my waistband, cocked it and told her, “Get into the bathroom, take your drink and your cigarette with you. Close the door.”
She did as I said and a moment later the doorbell rang. I peered out the window. It was a kid of maybe sixteen holding a couple of bags of food and beer. I shoved the pistol back in my waistband and opened the door. As I took the bags and paid him, I had a look at the parking lot, and glanced up and down the road. Nothing had changed. There were no new vehicles parked nearby. Nothing suspicious at all. But my gut told me that was wrong.
I closed the door and put the food on the chest of drawers. Cyndi came out of the bathroom, saw the food and smiled. It was a nice, natural smile. I studied her face a moment and somehow knew that that night she would cross the portal. I just hoped she crossed it alive.
After we’d eaten I put the packaging into the trash and checked the time. It was midnight. Outside, on the edge of hearing, I caught the whine of a big engine. I peered out of the edge of the drapes and saw a large, black SUV parked at the gas station across the road. It hadn’t been there before. Now it was.
I switched off the light and went on line on my laptop to rent a car from the smallest car rental I could find in Lexington, while she brushed her teeth. Then I stood and took the sheets and covers off the bed. She saw me and spoke through her toothpaste. “Wha ewe hooing?”
“I’m being cautious. You’re going to have an uncomfortable night, I’m afraid.”
She spat, rinsed, and wiped her mouth with a towel while I began making her a bed in the bath.
I gave her my most charming lopsided smile and said, “At least you’re not six foot two.”
“What are you doing?” she said again.
“I think we might have visitors. I want you to sleep dressed and I want you to be packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. And I do mean a moment. I say go, we go.”
She followed me into the bedroom where I put three pillows in a line on the bed and covered them with the eiderdown. She looked sick.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“What are you going to do? Where are you going to sleep?”
“I’m not going to sleep tonight. But I need you rested.” I shrugged. “You won’t sleep, you’ll be too stressed, but lie down and close your eyes. Get as much rest as you can. Try to relax.” I tried to look reassuring. “You never know. I might be wrong.”
She didn’t answer. She was standing in silhouette, backlit and framed by the bathroom door. I went and stood close to her. She looked up into my face and I could see that there was real fear in her eyes. “It’s real, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“They want to kill me.”
“Yes.” I looked at my watch. It was twelve fifteen. “After you switch off the bathroom light, they’ll give us at least an hour to get to sleep. If they come tonight, it could be any time after twelve. Get dressed, get packed up, then get as much rest as you can. Keep your gloves on. Do not leave any prints. Once I’ve closed the door, do not come out again until I call you.”
She nodded and went into the bathroom. I closed the door behind her and moved one of the chairs into the corner, so I was facing the entrance and the window at an angle. The drapes were not heavy, and the light from the streetlamps outside made enough of a glow that a body would be visible as a silhouette against them. I screwed the silencer onto the Sig, and settled to wait.
They came at ten minutes after three. The first thing I was aware of was the scrape of a heel on blacktop across the parking lot. Then another. Then a muttered voice. That meant at least two of them. They were not trying to be quiet. Some shuffling outside the door. I thought I made out three or perhaps four bodies. Then a shadow up against the side of the window, beside the door. When they came in I would be invisible to them. I was in deep shadow in the corner. I raised my weapon and steadied my breathing.
There was a soft rattle, then a click and the door eased open. The thin beam of a small flashlight penetrated the gloom, focused down at the floor. Two of them stood in the doorway, looking at the bed. Past them I could see another, on the left of the jamb, keeping watch. The shadow of the fourth was still visible against the drapes.
One thing was clear so far. They were not pros. The use of the flashlight was stupid. It not only risked waking their target, it cast the rest of the room into deeper darkness. They inched in closer a couple of steps, then directed the beam of the flashlight at the bulk of cushions under the eiderdown. I waited for his first shot. I had guessed it would be silenced, and it was. His weapon spat once. Then mine spat four times, two double taps, one into the shooter’s chest, the next into his pal’s.
It took the two guys outside a while to register that something was wrong. They heard the repeated spit of the weapon and assumed it was their man being thorough. They heard the grunts of pain and the thump of bodies on the floor. I guess they assumed it was the victim, falling out of bed. By the time the guy on the left of the door had turned to look in, I was right there, looking into his eyes. He wanted to shout. Actually he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t because he had the blade of my Fairbairn and Sykes fighting knife stuck through his trachea. I pulled him inside and let him drop with the knife still in his throat. In the same movement I stepped outside and put the Sig to the last man’s head. He was frowning, still wondering what the hell just happened.
I looked him over. He was holding a bargain basement 9 mm Taurus PT 111. He was forty-something, had a belly and stubble. He looked rough. He also looked scared. I said, “Hand me your weapon. Get inside.”
He nodded and did as I said. As we moved in, I closed the door and switched on the light. He stared down at his pal, the one with my knife in his throat. He wasn’t dead yet. His eyes had rolled up and his feet were jerking. I reached down and pulled the blade out of his throat. The blood flowed freely and he slipped away into oblivion. I wiped the blood on his pants and slipped the knife back in my boot.
The guy with the stubble and the gut was trembling badly. I said, “What’s your name?”
He tried three times before he could say it. “Joe. I’m Joe. Look, pal, I didn’t mean no… I mean if I’d known… We thought, we was told…”
“Shut up, Joe.”
“Yeah, sure…”
I looked down at his three colleagues. They weren’t wearing Italian suits. The guy who’d done the shooting was wearing jeans and cowboy boots. He had shoulder length blond hair and a denim shirt under a black leather jacket. His weapon was a 9 mm Smith & Wesson SDVE, three hundred and fifty bucks. The guy who’d come in with him had black hair in a ponytail almost down to his waist. He was also wearing jeans and boots, just like the guy whose throat I’d cut. He was unshaven, in a sweat shirt with a brown leather jacket. These clowns were not Omega. They weren’t even pros.
I pointed at the chair where I’d been sitting. “Sit down. Help yourself to a glass of whiskey, have a cigarette.”
Now he looked really scared.
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to talk. Tell me what I want to hear and you go home. I might even give you some money for your trouble. Piss me off and I’ll cut your throat, like your pal.”
He held up his hands. “OK, man. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I ain’t no hero. I ain’t about to give you no trouble.”
He edged over and lowered himself into my chair. I sat on the end of the bed and watched him. “Drink. Smoke.”
He nodded. “Yeah, OK. Whatever you say, pal. I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Who did you think you were going to find here?”
“A woman. They said there’d be a woman. They said there might be a guy, but we was to get rid of the woman. And the guy, obviously. If he was here. I didn’t know… We didn’t know it would be you… obviously…”
He tried three times and managed to light a cigarette.
“They?”
“The people who paid us to do the job…”
I smiled. “I got that, Joe. Who were those people?”
He swallowed hard. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly hold his drink. “I don’t know. They don’t… They never… It don’t work that way…”
“Relax. How did they get their instructions to you?”
He pointed his trembling cigarette hand over at the first guy I’d shot. He was almost weeping. “Hank. They talked to Hank on the telephone.”
I shook my head. “Hank is not a hit man. Neither are you. You’re amateurs.”
“No, no… No man, we ain’t hit men. No way. We’s, like you might say, enforcers. Hank has killed a couple of guys. Me, I never, you know? I’ll break an arm, maybe a leg. Usually I just help to hold the guy.”
“You’re enforcers? Who for?”
“It’s just a small outfit in Glen Burnie. We do a bit of this, a bit of that…” I waited. He swallowed. “Irish kid. He’s a bit crazy. He sells crack. Sometimes people don’t pay, so we go and see ’em.”
I nodded that I understood. “So what the hell are you doing in Kentucky?”
“Sometimes Hank freelances, you know what I’m saying? He’ll do anything. He ain’t squeamish. So he has some clients, sometimes they call him, you know, to do a job.”
“Who are the clients?”
“I dunno, man. Honest to God, man. He never told us. He’d just say, ‘OK, boys, we got a job.’ And that was it. We’d go and do it…”
“Kill somebody?”
“Sometimes, mostly just hurt them or put a scare into ’em.”
I thought about it. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Actually it didn’t make any sense at all.
“Glen Burnie? That’s outside Baltimore.”
“Pretty much, south of the river.”
“When did you get the call?”
“I dunno, Hank called us about five, five thirty. We was on the road by six.”
Just after we’d stopped. I nodded. “That your black SUV in the gas station across the road?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s the driver?”
“Me. I always do the driving. You ask some funny questions.”
“Give me the keys.”
“Whatcha gonna do?”
“Give me the keys.”
He reached in his pocket, pulled them out and threw them to me. I caught them with my left hand, and shot him in the head.
FIVE
I left him where he was in the chair, with his prints on the glass of spilled whiskey and the smoldering cigarette on the floor. I took a miniature of cheap Scotch from the mini bar, drained it and dropped the empty bottle at his feet. My shots had all been through-and-throughs, five in total. I collected the slugs and the casings, then used Joe’s Taurus to put two bullets through the knife wound in the blond guy’s trachea. After that I removed four more rounds from his magazine, leaving seven.
When the cops arrived, they’d find a bunch of bums who’d shot each other up. They might scratch their heads at a few details, but they wouldn’t waste the Kentucky taxpayer’s dollar on these out of state low-lifes. And if they did, all they’d find would be more questions.
I stepped out into the night. It was turning icy cold. I ran across the road, taking care to keep my face covered against the CCTV cameras at the gas station. I climbed in the SUV, drove back to the motel and parked beside the Focus, outside the room. Then I went and tapped on the bathroom door. “Cyndi, it’s me, Lacklan. We have to go.”
There was absolute silence for a moment, then the door opened a crack and she peered out. She was drawn and terrified. I shook my head. “We haven’t got time for this, Cyndi. I need you to get a grip and react. We have to go. Open the door.”
She opened the door. She was trembling badly. I pushed in past her, grabbed her case and thrust it into her hands. “Go outside and get into the black SUV. Not the Focus, the SUV. You understand?”
She stared up into my face and nodded.
“Do it. Now.”
She moved toward the open door. I grabbed the bedding from the bath and threw it all over the bed. Then I grabbed the whiskey, my cigarettes and the Zippo, slung my bag over my shoulder and followed her out, leaving the lights off and the door closed. There were none of my prints and none of Cyndi’s prints, none of my slugs and none of my casings. If they traced the Ford, it would lead them to Joseph O’Brien, who would soon vanish into thin air.
The sky was black overhead. The light from the streetlamps was a dead kind of yellow, and I could see clouds of condensation billowing from Cyndi’s mouth as she stood staring into the SUV. I opened the back, threw in her case and my bag, slammed it shut and physically lifted her into the passenger seat up front. I put the whiskey on her lap, closed the door and went around to the driver’s side. Then we were pulling out of the parking lot and accelerating through the night toward Lexington. I glanced at my watch. It was four AM.
I settled at a steady seventy, pulled my cigarettes from my pocket, shook one loose and fed it into my mouth from the pack. “Drink.” I glanced at her. She was staring at the bottle in her lap. I flipped my Zippo, leaned the cigarette into the flame and took a deep drag. As I blew out I said, “It’s not what your doctor would tell you to do for shock, but I never yet met a doctor who witnessed four men get killed. For me, whiskey does it every time. Take a shot, a big one. It’ll help, believe me.”
She was staring at me. She still looked pale. After a moment she opened the bottle with trembling hands and took a pull. It made her cough, but after a moment she took another.
I said, “Tell me when you’re ready for a cigarette.”
I knew pretty soon she was going to get cold and start shivering, but I couldn’t give her the medically prescribed treatment for shock. She was going to have to deal with it as best she could. And in my experience, which was a damn sight more extensive than most doctors, the best way of dealing with it involved a bottle of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes and a pair of balls. Two out of three for Cyndi would have to do.
We pulled in to Lexington at half past five, and by six o’clock I had found the estate on Nicholasville Road where the car hire firm was. I had it booked to collect at seven thirty, so we had an hour and a half to kill. Google told me there was a twenty-four hour fast food café at the Tates Creek shopping center, on Tates Creek Road, not far from the car rental. So we drove there, through the cold pre-dawn, and went into the soulless, plastic desolation of the café. I sat Cyndi down, put my jacket around her shoulders and got two buckets of coffee and two burgers. I laced the coffee with whiskey and we sat in silence for ten minutes, warming up.
After she’d drunk some of the brew she seemed to relax a little.
“Do you feel up to talking?”
She sighed and nodded. “Yes. I’m OK. Talking about what?”
“Now, here’s the thing, Cyndi, those men were not Omega.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me.”
“I have no idea. Wh
at makes you say they were not Omega?”
“You need to try and think this through. They were there for you. The last guy told me so. They knew where we were. They came right to the motel to the room. How would anybody know where you were at that time?”
“I’m telling you, Lacklan, I have no idea.”
“Did you call anybody on your phone?”
“No.”
“Your husband?”
Her face flushed with anger. “Will you let up about my husband!”
“Let me see your cell.”
“What? No!”
“I’m not going to check your calls. I’m going to check inside for a bug.”
She handed it to me. It was still turned off. I slid off the back and examined the inside. There was no tracking device. I gave it back to her.
“Those guys were amateurs. They were cheap muscle for some minor associate of the Irish mob in Baltimore.”
She glanced at me, then looked away and sipped her coffee.
“Does the Irish mob mean anything to you?”
“Of course not.”
“McFarlane?”
“Scottish!”
I left it at that, and at seven I took the SUV, parked it at the Southern Acres Christian Church parking lot, half a mile from the car rental, and went on foot to collect my new car. This one was a Honda Civic, one of the ten most unremarkable cars in the world, and exactly what we needed.
At twenty past eight I collected Cyndi from the café and we headed off. I was pretty confident at that time that Omega did not know where we were, or what vehicle we were driving, and I wanted to put as much distance between us and Lexington as I could. That meant not using remote roads, or roundabout routes. It meant getting on the I-64 and staying at a steady seventy miles per hour through Louisville to St. Louis, and then southwest on the I-44, through Springfield and Joplin, into Oklahoma, and there find somewhere to stay the night. It was ten hours driving, maybe more, and seven hundred miles. It was not my original plan, but I figured if I hadn’t known I was going to do it, neither could Omega.
And that took me back to the million dollar question.