A Wild Justice

by Craig Thomas

  He tossed his head. Even a Russian understood the allusion w Casablanca and Humphrey Bogart. This Cafe Americain, however, wasn’t owned by a soldier of fortune trying to forget Ingrid Bergman but by a real-life, made-in-Russia gangster. Valery Panshin.

  Vorontsyev hesitated, then turned into the alleyway and then the car park. He pulled into a parking space. Then locked the car and walked towards the entrance. A light over matt-black rear doors. The uniformed doorman recognized him. Had cause to. He’d narrowly evaded trial on two charges of malicious wounding with a knife. Vladimir — Vlad the Impaler as he liked to be known.

  ‘Hold the door open, there’s a good peasant,’ Vorontsyev murmured, stamping his snow-laden boots on the carpet as the doorman did so.

  The warmth of the place struck him and he removed his fur hat and gloves. The carpet was stained and lumped with snow.

  The cloakroom girl appeared offended as if by an unpleasant smell until she, too, recognized him. He moved towards the main bar and restaurant. There was a jazz group playing.

  Perhaps that was why Schneider came, for the jazz? It was why Vorontsyev himself came and why Panshin could be forgiven some small things because he hosted the best jazz in western Siberia; even American and British bands, not just Russians or the more obscure French units.

  He entered through the open doors and confronted a dinner jacketed bouncer. One of Panshin’s customer integration executives, or whatever he was calling them now. A hand was placed on his chest for a moment, before a waiter shook his head vehemently and mimed the taking of a warrant card from his pocket.

  ‘Sorry,’ the bouncer murmured.

  ‘Accepted-‘ He was about to ask for the man’s name, just for the pleasure of unsettling him, when he saw, seated in his usual place at the side of the small stage, Panshin himself.

  And the tall figure of Dr David Schneider, about to seat himself at Panshin the gangster’s private table.

  SIX

  Tidal Waters

  Lock turned the Toyota off Camelback Road and the glare of the desert sunrise slid off the windscreen as he entered the dawn shadows between the buildings on 24th Street. Ahead of him, the green Lincoln nosed into the grounds of the Arizona Biltmore. The Lloyd Wright-in spired, blocklike building glinted in the early sunlight. The car emerged into the sun once more.

  He slowed and drew into the sidewalk, his chest tight with satisfied tension. They were Tran’s men, the three shadowy heads he had been able to see through the rear window of the Lincoln — they were. The thought that they had to be Beth’s murderers shut out almost everything else except his awareness of his temperature, his nerves itching and jumping just beneath the damp surface of his skin.

  He eased the car forward to the hotel driveway. The green Lincoln was dropping its nose, nuzzling into the underground garage of the Biltmore. As it vanished, he moved forward, parking the Toyota beside a dry lawn already thirsty for the sprinklers whose water caught the sunrise. He left the car and crunched on gravel towards the entrance to the car park. His right hand touched at the lump of the Colt in his jacket pocket as he walked.

  He sidled down the slope, slid beside the automatic barrier, and entered the garage. Cool and petrol-scented. Limousines and smaller cars stretched away like racked groceries, neat as a supermarket.

  Silence. Hard striplighting. Then a muffled groan and the sigh of the lift, as if it was shocked by evidence of pain. He saw two black-sweatered figures beside the green Lincoln, fifty yards away. Another man, clutching his one hand with the other, was leaning against the bonnet, the other two men clustered around him, arguing in high, trilling voices, arms waving, as if they had entered the garage to find their car stolen. Then the lift doors opened and another Asiatic in a white silk shirt and fawn slacks emerged, hurrying at once towards the Lincoln. His arms, too, semaphored distress and anger. Lock watched from behind the flank of a red Porsche as he moved closer. The silk-shirted man’s voice was immediately authoritative, his arms offering superior signals that quelled the others. He seemed oblivious to the bloodstained wrapping around the injured man’s hand.

  Tran.

  Two GM saloons, then a big estate car, then a European hatchback. He was twenty yards from them, his breathing calm.

  Tran — it had to be him — was gesturing angrily in denial. Berating them. Then the noise of his hand on the face of one of the intruders, who had dared truculence and excuse. Tran gestured towards the garage entrance — so violently that Lock ducked out of sight, suspecting he had been seen — and shouted what seemed like the same injunctions again and again. Lock cautiously raised his head.

  The doors of the Lincoln were open, they were helping the wounded man into the back of the car. Then, nodding with furious, automaton energy, the driver and the third man got into the car. The engine fired. Tran had already turned his back on them, his broad features enraged. Lock’s face assumed a similar mask in grotesque imitation as Tran walked towards the lift doors. The tyres of the Lincoln screeched and then the car heaved itself sullenly towards the daylight and the barrier.

  Lock watched it as it passed him, then rose from his crouch and hurried towards Tran. The noise of the Lincoln surging to the top of the slope faded away. He saw and heard nothing but the small, compact Vietnamese and his diminishing distance from the lift. Tran reached it and pressed the button. The man’s face was thoughtful, still angry. Lock was fifteen yards from him as the lift doors clunked open. Fifteen — running. He saw Tran’s face turn towards the source of the echoing footfalls, saw his surprise and then his instinctive jab at the buttons inside the lift. Eight, six — doors beginning to close, Tran’s face nakedly expressing shock and the vulnerability of being unarmed and alone. He seemed to stare for a moment towards the sun-spilling entrance after the vanished Lincoln, as if to recall it. Two —

  His arms blundered between the closing doors, springing them back. He lunged into the lift, thudding against the far wall. Tran began moving away from him. Lock thrust the gun against the man’s ribs and jabbed over his shoulder at the Door Close button.

  ‘Which floor?’ he expelled like a winded breath. ‘Floor?’ He jabbed the gun into Tran’s ribs. ‘Come onV

  Tran, arms raised to the level of his shoulders, his eyes blackly calculating, then quiescent, reached out and pressed a button.

  The top floor, where the suites were located. Stupid not to know that. Lock told himself. He motioned Tran back against the wall of the compartment, leaning himself on the opposite wall, breathing heavily, his head hanging like that of a wounded bull.

  The gun was, he realised, remarkably steady in his hand. Tran’s eyes flickered as if he was viewing a high-speed series of still pictures projected on a screen. He didn’t know who Lock was, was trying to locate him in some mental file — and was afraid because of his anonymity. Until-

  ‘Mr Tran?’ he said.

  ‘You are Lock?’ Tran replied, his eyes now inspecting Lock like the fingers of a blind man, quickly and thoroughly. There was an imperceptible nod, as if he had salisfactorily answered his own question.

  ‘You guessed it,’

  ‘My — business is not with you, Mr Lock, nor yours with me.’ Lock was shocked into attention at the prim, demarcating remark. Tran had regained an impassive composure that unsettled him.

  ‘Your guys tried to kill me,’ was all that he could find in reply.

  Even to himself, it rang hollow with complaint.

  ‘My — guys?’

  ‘The blackshirts in the green Lincoln — the ones you just sent away to find a doctor who won’t ask questions about a gunshot wound.’

  The lift stopped and the doors opened onto thick-piled carpet and the hot, airless scent of a hotel corridor. He gestured with the Colt, and Tran looked at his steady hand. The man’s black eyes rose to his face, and slowly became unnerved.

  ‘Out,’ Lock said. ‘Anyone else up here with you, Tran? I mean, people like those who burglarised the Grainger home — ‘ Tran stared as the
words choked off, and he saw the Vietnamese realise his assumption of a destructive recent past.

  ‘I — am sorry concerning your family tragedy, Mr Lock. I know nothing of it.’

  They had paused outside the door to Tran’s suite. The Vietnamese, neat and small in his silk shirt and fawn slacks, had casually taken the keycard from his breast pocket. ‘Inside,’ he murmured. Tran shrugged and inserted the keycard. The lock buzzed and he pushed open the door.

  ‘Please come in, Mr Lock.’

  Lock nudged the door wide. There was no one concealed behind it, no one in the suite’s large sitting room — or the bedroom or the bathroom. Tran wandered through the open windows to the balcony, the white net curtains stirred by the early morning breeze.

  ‘Come back in here, Tran.’ His voice lacked authority, as did the gun.

  Tran re-entered the living room, gestured to two chairs on either side of a table, and seated himself. Angrily and impotently, Lock sat opposite him, the gun cradled in his lap.

  ‘Why do you feel it necessary to interfere in my business affairs, Mr Lock?’ Tran lit a cigarette in an ebony holder. ‘Your distress at your family’s murder is evident. I understand.’ His voice was as bland as that of an analyst. ‘But, as I said, those unfortunate events have nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Vaughn — Grainger’s in the hospital-‘ Tran nodded. ‘You put him there. It’s drugs, isn’t that right? Red horse, I mean?’

  ‘Shall I call room service for some coffee — tea?’

  ‘No!’ Lock snarled. Beyond the net curtains, the day was heating rapidly under the blank sky. ‘They must have died because of the drugs,’ he insisted. The people you deal with, Tran inside Grainger Technologies-‘ There was the slightest flicker of surprise and satisfaction in the black, stonelike eyes. ‘— they wanted Billy silenced. They were covering up.’

  ‘Ah, a cover-up. I see,’ Tran murmured.

  ‘You admit it?’ Why was Tran at ease, suddenly more relaxed?

  ‘What’s happening here, Tran?’

  The room’s air-conditioning stirred the exhaled cigarette smoke.

  Eventually, Tran asked: ‘What did you expect to learn by coming here, Mr Lock — by following my people from the Grainger house?’

  ‘I want to know the truth, Tran. I want to know who murdered my sister.’

  ‘I don’t know who killed your sister.’ Were his eyes shaded with apprehensions of his own, for an instant?

  ‘But you know names. You know who your suppliers are.

  Those names will do.’

  ‘I do not think I can supply those names. It would endanger my investments, my business.’ Tran glanced through the barely moving net curtains, down towards the gardens of the Biltmore and the peacocks’ tails of the fountains and sprinklers scattered geometrically across the lawns. Patches of gravel were wet.

  ‘I need those names, Tran. You’ll give them to me. There are people inside Grainger Technologies, right, who supply you with heroin from Siberia … maybe it’s even refined over there. It originates, I would guess, in the Moslem Triangle. The Russian mafia has to be involved, too, I imagine …’ The numbers of people involved, the size of the operation, the power of each unknown person, retreated into the shadows of his imagination.

  Tran, sitting impassively, wasn’t even frightened of a Colt. ‘Am I right?’ he insisted.

  ‘I take delivery of an assured supply. There is no need for me to either know or speculate, Mr Lock.’

  ‘You take an awful lot on trust, Tran.’

  ‘It is sensible to do so.’ Once more, the Vietnamese glanced down into the grounds of the hotel, like someone anxious for the arrival oi the postman, or a plumber.

  ‘Don’t give me that garbage, Tran. You have the names. Don’t worry, I won’t be indiscreet. What you tell me won’t be traced back to you.’

  Tran smiled. ‘Very reassuring.’

  Again, he glanced towards the windows. The air coming in was hot now, the air-conditioning protesting against its intrusion more loudly. Tran lit another cigarette and stood up. The gun jerked out of Lock’s lap uncertainly, almost convulsively. He realised the strained state of his nerves.

  Tran sighed, cutting off the slight noise almost immediately.

  He sat down again, crossing his legs.

  ‘You see, Mr Lock, however sympathetic I may be towards your tragedy, business ethics prevent me from being indiscreet.

  I am afraid I cannot help you. There is no benefit for me in doing so.’

  ‘Then I have to kill you, right?’

  ‘Then you would learn nothing.’

  ‘Then tell me!’ Lock raged, leaning forward on his chair, his facial muscles taut, his neck stretched like a child in a furious, blind temper. ‘Tell me who’s behind it, who killed my sister, damn you!’

  Tran uncrossed his legs. He gripped the arms of the chair, as if to raise himself. Yet his attention was somehow beyond Lock.

  ‘I do not know who killed your sister, Mr Lock.’ Tran’s voice was louder. ‘If, as you suspect, they were killed by associates of mine — that their deaths had anything to do with the people with whom I deal — then I am sorry, I have nothing I can tell you. / do not know, Mr Lock.’

  And then he realised he had his back to the door. Window, door, corridor, window … Tran had kept looking towards the windows, waiting for something, something he expected to see — just as he was talking loudly now, expecting someone to hear … Tran’s people must have returned, Tran had seen their car or them out front.

  Lock rose to his feet, brandishing the gun like a club. Tran flinched, but his eyes remained confident. They were close, almost there He turned away to the door. Opened it. The corridor was empty. He felt panic rising in him like choking water. Take Tran, get out He turned back to the Vietnamese. The man’s body was disappearing into the bedroom of the suite. He heard the door lock.

  The situation had reversed in an instant. There was not time to break down the door, turn Tran into a shield He looked out of the door. A shout. The sight of a raised hand.

  The figure of one of Tran’s people, still dressed in black. Lock looked wildly around him.

  FIRE EXIT.

  He blundered through the doors and down the echoing stairs.

  ‘You think he’s covering something up,’ Goludin remarked, his hands around the thick white coffee mug, his shoulders hunched against the palpable suspicion and dislike of the few gasfield workers with whom they were sharing the canteen.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know what,’ Maria confirmed. ‘It doesn’t seem to lead us anywhere or even to make any sense.’

  The canteen’s high windows were thick with snow. The blizzard outside bullied against the flimsy buildings of the Rig 47

  “complex. The barracklike canteen was all but empty. There was rock music from loudspeakers, murmured voices, the deep distrust as obvious as the smells from the kitchen. Probably everyone in the room had something to hide, some fiddle, some shady past.

  ‘Have you finished?’ she asked with impatient enthusiasm, suddenly wrapping her long scarf across her throat, bunching her woollen hat in her gloved hands. Goludin appeared reluctant to move. ‘I want to check all the supplies that have come in since the explosion in the flat.’

  ‘You think someone else brought the drugs — ‘ He was leaning forward and whispering now. ‘- up here in place of that guy Hussain?’

  ‘The Major does. I do as I’m told.’

  ‘Why up here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just till things die down a bit, maybe. The Iranian worked here, he must have had something to do with the drugs-?’ The statement ended interrogatively. She felt the gap between theory and instinct like a rush of cold air through an opened door. It was just theory. The wind howled in a short silence between pop songs. ‘We can’t find them in town, so maybe they’re here. Who knows?’

  ‘Where do we start?’

  ‘You take the food store, I’ll cover equipment and spares. OK?’


  ‘It could be,’ Goludin admitted. ‘Hussain worked here, just like the Iranian. Doesn’t seem they knew each other, though, does it?’

  She rubbed her forehead. Hours of fruitless questioning came back like a headache. Al-Jani had no friends, no close acquaintances on the rig. Just another roughneck despised by the Russians and Ukrainians and Europeans, and ignored by his fellow Moslems, apparently. Hussain had friends here, though. A search of their quarters had revealed nothing, except resentment escaping like a leak of gas.

  ‘Let’s just check the latest shipment of supplies and hope this bloody weather improves by the morning.’ She stood up. ‘Come on, Goludin.’

  She watched the men that watched their departure from the canteen. Sullen or merely weary, it was difficult to tell.

  Unkempt, bearded faces with split lips, red eyes, chilblained hands. There wasn’t even energy for lust in their eyes and bodies. Just suspicion; dislike of the cops.

  The blizzard tore the outer door from her grip and flung snow in their faces. The snow seemed so violent and solid she had the sensation of being trapped against the tunnel wall of a metro as a train hurtled past her only inches away. It blew through the garish floodlighting that illuminated the compound of the rig She could see nothing, not even the other buildings.

  Pointing, she shouted: ‘I’ll be over there! The equipment store

  — got that?’ Goludin nodded. ‘Whoever finishes first comes back here. We’ll compare notes!’ Goludin nodded once more, his face masked by his scarf and the hood of his parka.

  She hesitated, then launched herself into the blizzard, sensing at once that she had already disappeared from Goludin’s sight.

  The wind cut through her as if she was naked and the sense that she was invisible after her first two or three steps unnerved her. She was blundering through an endless series of heavy white curtains, trying as in a dream to thrust them aside. She thought she heard a door slam, the growl of distant machinery.