One Dead Witness

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  ‘The lads’ve had a good look around ... can’t see anyone. I’ll tell ‘em to keep a passing eye on you until we go off-duty at six, though I doubt there’ll be a problem.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Danny sounded unsure.

  ‘You got something to tell me?’ the Sergeant enquired. She was usually pretty intuitive with things like this.

  Danny shook her head.

  She went to the front door with Lesley, offered her thanks, watched her walk away up the driveway past the Mercedes. Something in the light, the shimmer of the trees against the street lamp focused Danny’s eyes on the front radiator grille of the car. For a moment Danny could not see what it was that made her look. Then she groaned out loud and rushed to the car.

  Lesley spun round.

  ‘The bastard!’ Danny uttered.

  She stared down at the top of the radiator grille and the jagged stump of metal upon which the famous three-pointed star used to proudly sit. It had been snapped off.

  Danny’s mouth tensed angrily. Anger boiled up inside her.

  When she checked the rest of the car, she found what she feared. A track of scratches had been gouged down both sides, from front wing to rear, making some sense of the noises Danny had heard earlier.

  Kruger thought it pointless to leave Kelly outside in the comms van whilst everyone else was inside the club and they knew the precise whereabouts of their target. Accordingly he teamed her up with Jimmy Armstrong and, as a couple, they came into the club after a lengthy period of queuing.

  Dale played the part of a single, unattached male, targeting various females throughout the evening. It was a part he played well.

  Meanwhile, Kruger and Myrna danced the night away. He began to enjoy himself, despite sweating profusely because he was unable to remove his jacket for obvious reasons.

  Keeping tabs on Bussola was easy.

  The mobster, his fat friend, and the two bodyguards occupied a table in one corner of the room, constantly being attended by waitresses. The two minders remained detached and alert, whilst their boss and his buddy were fawned upon by a stream of sexily-clad women, who mostly looked like hookers. The two men spent some time on the dance floor, gyrating as rudely as their bulk would allow with a number of these women who all seemed to be very impressed with them.

  Kruger hazarded an educated guess that if Bussola was playing away at all, it was probably with prostitutes or women who were only interested in screwing him because of his exalted position in low-life. Having been fucked by the biggest mobster in Florida was probably quite a thrill, Kruger assumed. They were probably not any sort of threat to Felicity, other than by way of sexually transmitted diseases.

  Myrna enjoyed herself too. This was the first time in years she’d been to a nightclub and although it was work which brought her here, she decided to get full value.

  She moved slinkily to the beat. So slinkily that Kruger often found himself transfixed by her mesmeric gyrations. The sweat poured down from her scalp, temple, neck, shoulders and cleavage, making Kruger’s tongue flicker in anticipation of being able to lick it off her body.

  So near yet so far.

  It was just as well he was a man of high moral values, otherwise he could easily have been driven by lust.

  Just before two o’clock, Bussola and company made a move to leave.

  Kruger and his employees left quickly, discreetly, ahead of him.

  Kelly returned to the comms van; Dale and Jimmy went to a car each. Kruger and Myrna got into Myrna’s Lexus.

  They had only a short wait.

  Bussola’s stretch limo drew up to the hotel entrance. A doorman opened the rear door in readiness. The two bodyguards appeared ahead of Bussola, checking.

  Moments later the man himself emerged from the hotel. His friend - or whoever the hell the other guy happened to be - was at his shoulder. They squeezed into the limo and the bodyguards got into the front seat next to the driver.

  ‘No women,’ Kruger observed. ‘He’s had plenty of opportunity to pick one up.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s faithful after all,’ Myrna suggested.

  ‘And lions don’t have big teeth.’

  The limo pulled smoothly away into the night.

  Kruger’s team began to follow.

  Despite the early hours, tailing the limo through Miami was an absolute breeze because Miami is one of those cities which never sleeps and the amount of traffic about was phenomenal. Kruger found the experience exhilarating, though he would have preferred to have been behind the wheel rather than passenger. It was too many years since he had been involved in mobile surveillance. He’d almost forgotten how much fun it was. He was also pleased to note that his people had following techniques off a ‘T’ - because he’d taught them all he knew.

  The limo worked its way out of South Beach, down to MacArthur Causeway, over the Miami Channel and into the city. From there it meandered south. For a few blocks Kruger thought the tail had been spotted, particularly when the limo executed a series of V-turns, sudden stops and block-loops. The team held its nerve and after five minutes of these anti-surveillance manoeuvres continued its journey. Bussola was obviously going through the motions as he probably did on every journey he undertook. However, they were moves that a good following team should be ready for and act accordingly.

  The limo hit the Latin Quarter and eventually landed in Shenandoah where it stopped outside a parade of rundown shops and offices. Jimmy Armstrong just happened - to be the eyeball at the time and the rest of the team, following his instructions, parked discreetly in an arc 200 to 500 metres away, but not in visual contact with the limo - which was intensely frustrating for all concerned. They had to rely totally on Jimmy’s commentary.

  ‘It’s like some sorta shop,’ Jimmy said over the radio, trying to describe the place where Bussola’s limo had pulled up. ‘Low rise ... dunno ... difficult to see properly without getting much closer.’

  ‘Roger,’ Kruger acknowledged.

  ‘Well, boss, what we gonna do?’ Myrna asked with a yawn. Since leaving the club her energy had dissipated and she needed her bed quite badly. Suddenly she felt her age.

  ‘Sit tight, I suppose.’

  Myrna slid down her seat, reclined it and closed her eyes.

  Jimmy watched all the occupants of the limo, with the exception of the driver, get out and go into what was probably once a shop with a couple of floors above which could have been storerooms, offices or apartments. The shop at ground floor, with a massive plate-glass window white-washed from the inside, seemed to be derelict.

  Jimmy reported there was definitely a light on at both ground-floor and first-floor level.

  To Kruger it sounded like it could be some kind of illegal gambling joint, but he had heard lots of things about Bussola from his time as a cop and never was there a whisper of gambling. Everything else imaginable in the criminal line, but not gambling.

  Still, you never could tell. Money was money to people like Bussola and where it came from was immaterial.

  ‘Update,’ Kruger snapped into his radio. It had been a good thirty seconds since Jimmy had finished speaking and Kruger was getting crabby.

  ‘Very little going on . . . hang fire, the limo’s pulling away without our man. He could be settled here for a while.’

  ‘Is there much other traffic?’

  ‘Naw - quiet as a grave.’

  ‘Pedestrians?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Kruger said desperately.

  ‘An all-night drugstore at the end of the block.’

  ‘Dale - did you receive that?’ Kruger asked the other Armstrong brother.

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘Go check the place over, will ya? See if you can find out anything - discreetly, of course. Treat yourself to a packet of Jiffs while you’re in there. Put ‘em down to expenses.’

  ‘Roger. I need to renew my supply ... the last ones I bought have gone right past their “bes
t before” date.’

  Kruger and Myrna chuckled.

  A few seconds later, Dale’s car cruised slowly past. Kruger settled back to wait for an update.

  Five minutes later Dale was back on the air.

  ‘The guy from the drugstore thinks it’s a telephone sales place now. Used to be a barber shop. Closed down about eighteen months ago. Guy didn’t have anything else to say voluntarily. I got the impression he knows who owns the place and he ain’t too happy about divulging. And I’ve walked past and tried the front door. Locked.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Kruger said to Myrna before replying over the radio to Dale. ‘Received and understood. Now you pull outta there and don’t try any more stunts.’

  Dale acknowledged.

  Kruger was puzzled. ‘Telephone sales?’ he said with disbelief. He looked thoughtfully at Myrna. ‘Telephone sales at this time-a day?’

  She shrugged ... and something dawned on Kruger. He sat bolt upright and thumped the dash triumphantly. ‘Not tele-sales - tele-sex! Let’s check it out. I’m intrigued.’

  Tracey was hot stuff. She was one of the favourites on the sex-line. This was because of her northern English accent, now so familiar to millions of Americans through the medium of the sit-corn Frasier and the character of Daphne, whose dubious vowels are supposed to originate in Manchester.

  Tracey was in constant demand from a stream of men who happily jerked themselves off with the assistance of her voice, a telephone and whatever aids they had available.

  She had just finished a particularly horrible call with one of her regulars who purported to be a Texan billionaire. He was on the line every night and if he was calling from Houston, as he claimed, it would be costing him a fortune ... which, of course, was the whole idea, with Bussola and the phone company splitting the revenue.

  Easy money. Big profits.

  ‘Keep ‘em on the line!’ one poster proclaimed on the wall in front of Tracey.

  ‘Premature ejaculations we don’t need!’ said another.

  And Tracey kept the Texan on the line. Right from the moment she allowed him to rip her clothes off, unpack the whip and vibrator and gently eased the latter up her ass. Thirty-five minutes later, as decreed by the customer, Tracey changed her mind about sex and entered the ‘rape’ phase where the Texan beat up on her - and still managed to make her come at the same time as he did. Except that he really did come all over his belly and she faked a multiple orgasm whilst at the same time chewing on a slice of pepperoni pizza.

  She slammed the phone down, closed her eyes wearily and sniffed up through her cocaine-damaged nostrils.

  A line of lights flashed on her little switchboard, demanding her attention. She frowned and ignored them, leaning back in her telephonist’s chair and glancing down the row of booths. There were a dozen in all, each one soundproofed from its neighbours, around the walls of the former barbershop which still smelled of hairspray.

  Each booth was occupied by an experienced sex-telephonist busy handling calls. Leaning a little further back, Tracey could hear some of the things going on. Grunts, panting, screams of pain and passion, loving whispers, sexual demands. The noises were like the combination of a zoo and a blue-movie soundtrack.

  The telephonists - two male, the remainder female - came from a range of backgrounds, each with their own personal reason for being there, not least of which for all of them was that they were paid tax-free. There were single mothers, supermarket cashiers, a former prostitute with a tongue of silk, and a couple of out-of-work actors trying to make ends meet whilst ‘resting’.

  And they were all good at sextalk: chat which could make the customer - always a man - ejaculate whilst imagining a vivid sexy scenario. They could ad lib at will, immediately adopting the role required by the caller, always giving their best shot.

  ‘Answer yer fuckin’ lines,’ Tracey’s earphones informed her.

  She looked over her shoulder and shot a sneering glance at the supervisor who was sitting behind a large switchboard on a small raised dais at the back of the room. From there, the supervisor could dip into all the workers’ calls, keeping a check by listening in ... and also being able to tell when a telephonist wasn’t working.

  And work they did. This was no easy option. It was draining, emotional toil. Twelve-hour stints. Continuous, consecutive calls. Constantly talking and listening to the weirdest fantasies imaginable and having the ability and imagination to match them. It was beginning to take its toll on Tracey that night as she suddenly found she needed the lift which only one thing could give her.

  Bitch, she thought. She gave the supervisor a one-digit salute, ensuring she didn’t see it, of course. She ripped the headset off and stood up. ‘I need a piss,’ she announced and picked up her purse.

  At that moment the front door opened.

  Bussola, his two meat-head bodyguards and the other guy came in. They walked straight inside, completely ignoring the telephonists, went through a door at the back, down a short corridor and up the stairs beyond.

  One of the bodyguards stayed at the door and sat down in a plastic chair.

  Tracey watched the entrance of the men, completely astounded. She shook her head, hardly able to believe who had just walked through the door.

  Two people she thought she would never see again.

  Bussola and the man accompanying him.

  Charlie Gilbert.

  Charlie Fucking Gilbert.

  The man she had once trusted. The man who had promised her the earth. Her guts coiled with the hatred she harboured for him.

  Because look where she had ended up. At the age of nineteen she was working on a sex-chatline, verbally masturbating guys over the telephone wires.

  Tracey walked numbly towards the seated bodyguard. He looked tiredly at her and stood up as she approached the door through which his boss had just gone.

  ‘Where ya goin’, girl?’

  ‘I need to pee,’ she said truthfully. ‘The toilet’s through there.’ It was - down along the ground-floor hallway, last door on the right.

  The bodyguard raised his big square chin and dark bushy eyebrows in a kind of acknowledgement and nodded slightly. His eyes bore down the length of his broken nose. ‘How much d’ya cost, babe?’

  ‘I’m too fuckin’ expensive for you, ya greasy dago,’ she responded, and tried to push past him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly towards him, raising her up onto tiptoe so that her belly was at his groin level. He was already hard. She could feel it through her clothes.

  ‘Don’t push your luck, babe. If I want you, I have you.’ His breath was enhanced by garlic.

  Tracey uttered a short laugh of contempt, even though she was fully aware that she was very close to annoying him. Her eyes traversed slowly down to his hand, the big fat fingers squeezing like a vice around her bicep. ‘Let go.’

  He eased his grip slowly. His mouth was open and his nostrils were dilating. Long hairs grew out of them. His ears also sprouted a bushy forest. He had blackheads on his nose and around his mouth. Specks of perspiration were dotted all over his face.

  All these things Tracey saw as she regained her proper footing.

  All these things made her cringe and find him utterly repulsive.

  She edged past, through the door.

  ‘And don’t go upstairs,’ he told her. ‘Or else.’

  Kruger looked down at the object he held between his left forefinger and thumb.

  It resembled a doll’s eye with a sty in one corner of it and was surrounded by a rubber sucker rather like the tip of a kid’s arrow, though it was half the diameter. In his right hand was a palm-sized portable TV which he flicked on. The tiny screen, four centimetres square, was fuzzy for a few moments then gradually cleared and came into focus, giving him a dear, monochrome, slug’s-eye view of the underside of his chin and his nostrils, transmitted from the lens he was holding in his fingers.

  He pointed the lens towards a shop doorway and saw that image reproduced on the screen.
Kruger was impressed. He could see why this was one of his top selling lines. It was like having an extra eye on the end of your fingers.

  He was standing at the rear of the comms van which was parked in a quiet street. Myrna and Dale stood next to him. Kelly was in the van, the back doors being open. She peered over Kruger’s shoulder, looking at the tiny TV.

  ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘The lens has a powerful night intensifier built into it which self-focuses and adjusts to the available light. There’s a mike fitted in the lens too which can give pretty good results, even through glass.’

  Kruger nodded approvingly. He was not sure if there would be any call to use the surveillance kit tonight, but decided to take it along just in case. ‘Are you receiving okay?’ he asked Kelly.

  She turned into the van, switched on a monitor, made a couple of minor adjustments and the screen blinked into life. She saw exactly what Kruger saw on the mini screen. ‘Yep - no probs.’

  Kruger looked at Myrna and Dale.

  Like himself, they had changed into more appropriate clothing for the little foray ahead, having ditched their party gear for all black - jeans, T-shirts, jackets and sneakers which had been kept ready in the van for such an eventuality. ‘We play it by ear - literally,’ Kruger said. ‘We don’t know what the hell’s going on there. They could just be playing cards. We’ll leave Jimmy watching the front. Myself and Myrna will go to the rear of the property to see if there is any way of getting a view inside. Dale, you be our lookout, okay?’

  Both nodded.

  Myrna was now raring to go, having got her second wind.

  ‘Anybody any further suggestions?’ Kruger asked.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Let’s go then - and take care.’ He picked a set of aluminium extending ladders which were part of the van’s equipment store and hauled them over his shoulder.

  Tracey took her time in the restroom. Her mind was in complete turmoil. She had never expected to see either of the two men again, particularly Gilbert. He had conned and tricked her, and used and ultimately abused her, then discarded her into the clutches of people who did it all over again. It was only through her strength of character that she had risen from the gutter to her present position - on the kerb of the sidewalk. But at least it was upwards.