The Outsider (James Bishop 4)

by Dean, Jason

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  The line went silent. He and Emily watched as a young stockbroker type in a smart three-piece suit exited Greystone and trotted off towards the pharmacy directly opposite.

  Less than a minute later, Muro came back to him. ‘Got it. He’s not in the phone book, but that’s not the only book I use around here. The address is 844 West Evergreen Drive, Bloomington. I’m checking it out on Google Streetview right now, and I can see it’s a nice little one-storey house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Lots of trees.’

  ‘And where’s Bloomington in relation to Indianapolis?’

  ‘Indianapolis? Uh, about fifty miles south of it, I guess. So is that all you want?’

  ‘That’s all, thanks.’

  ‘Then consider this one a freebie. Watch your back, man. I mean it.’ The line went dead and Bishop handed the phone back to Emily, who put it back in her pocket.

  From behind him, Dario said, ‘Who you calling?’

  Bishop turned and saw Dario still leaning against the van, still playing with his own phone. ‘The same guy I called before.’

  ‘Yeah? Why?’

  ‘I needed somebody else found.’

  ‘Sure you weren’t calling the cops, man?’

  ‘How would calling them help me? Or my friends, for that matter?’

  ‘Now you’re getting the picture.’ Dario casually scratched his crotch with his free hand and said, ‘So how much longer we gotta stick around here?’

  Bishop turned away without answering. It would take as long as it took. Assuming Rylander hadn’t completely lost his nerve in there. That seemed unlikely, but you never knew.

  They waited. After a couple more minutes, the Greystone doors opened and a fifty-something woman in a smart business suit, carrying a laptop bag, exited and went straight to her Audi parked a few spaces away. A short time after she drove off, a casually dressed man in his sixties walked past Bishop and Emily and turned into the entrance.

  After five minutes of nothing else happening, Bishop was staring absently at the ground at his feet when Emily said, ‘Chris is back.’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Bishop looked up and saw the glass doors swinging shut behind Rylander as he walked towards them carrying a very slim black briefcase. He looked fairly pleased with himself.

  ‘Hail, the returning hero,’ Emily said when he reached the van.

  ‘Cut it out,’ Rylander said with a smile. His cheeks had coloured a little.

  ‘No problems then?’ Bishop asked.

  ‘None,’ Rylander said as Dario came over and joined them. ‘It all went just like you said. I signed in at reception, went downstairs to the vault where the guy took a quick look at the licence, checked it against my face and let me through to the anteroom. Then he checked my key against the computer and took me into the vault itself. I couldn’t believe it.’ He gave the case to Bishop and added, ‘Paul rented one of those large flat safety-deposit boxes. That case was the only thing in there. Nothing else would have fitted anyway.’

  Bishop quickly inspected the case. It looked new but the design was pure retro. It was made of black aluminium, measured about sixteen inches by twelve, and was less than two inches thick. Instead of key locks, it had the old-style numbered wheels next to the two latches. Both locks were set at 0000. Bishop tried flipping the release tabs, and wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. The case was also fairly hefty. Maybe twelve pounds all told, three of which probably accounted for the case itself.

  He gently shook it from side to side, but nothing rattled round inside.

  ‘I did exactly the same thing in the viewing room,’ Rylander said. ‘No idea what’s inside. And I don’t know the code either.’

  ‘When you took it out of the safety-deposit box,’ Bishop said, ‘both combinations were set at zero like this?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  And Mechner had been an accountant too, which meant the right combo could be pretty much anything. And with a four-number lock, that meant a total of ten thousand possible combinations to choose from. Per lock. Bishop walked back to the van and slid open the side door. He took a seat and placed the case on his lap. The others came over and Emily sat down next to him.

  ‘Any ideas?’ he asked her.

  ‘I couldn’t begin to guess what the combination might be,’ she said.

  ‘When were you born? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t mind. I was born on the second of July, during the so-called Summer of Love, although my dad said it was anything but.’

  Bishop moved his thumb over the left-hand rotary dials until he had 7267. He moved the latch to the side. Nothing. He then tried it on the right-hand lock. Again, no result. He tried 0702 on one side and 1967 on the other. Nothing. When he asked her for Paul’s birthday, she told him it was the twentieth of November, 1962. He tried 1120 on one lock and 1962 on the other. When that didn’t work, he reversed them. Again, no success.

  ‘Hey, let’s go,’ Dario said. ‘We’ll open it back at the apartment.’

  ‘Be patient,’ Bishop said. ‘Let me think for a minute.’

  He wasn’t about to explain to Dario that they had to open it here and now. There was no other way. If he took the case back to the apartment unopened only to discover that its contents weren’t what he’d said they were, then Bishop, Strickland and Clea would all be dead within seconds. That’s if they were lucky.

  No, Bishop needed to know what was in the case now. If Mechner’s evidence was related to Guzman and his sister, all well and good. But if it wasn’t he’d have to act accordingly. That meant disarming and incapacitating Dario to start with, then working out some kind of game plan to somehow get Strickland and Clea back alive.

  But first he needed to get inside.

  There was another way to do it, of course. Back when Bishop had been in prison his old cellmate, Jorge, had shown him a thing or two about picking locks, and that had included numbered combination locks on cases. But the whole process was time-consuming. It would be better all round if he could just figure out the actual combination somehow.

  ‘Paul would have written it down somewhere,’ Emily said. ‘I’m sure of it. Unless it was something obvious, that is.’

  Bishop turned to her, eyebrows raised. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Paul had a pretty awful memory for numbers and dates. Hard to believe, but it’s true. He was always very precise in writing down everything, though, and he rarely made mistakes in his job. I mean, if he had, he wouldn’t have lasted very long, would he?’

  ‘No, I guess not.’ With his eidetic memory Bishop was just the opposite. He rarely had a need to write anything down, but he knew he was an anomaly in that respect. Yet Mechner hadn’t left any written code in the envelope to help jog his own memory, and the safety-deposit number engraved upon the key was unlikely to open the case. Not only was it too obvious, but it was made up of six numbers. So something else then.

  Then he got it. It was the only answer left. He said to Rylander, ‘Let me have that licence again.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Rylander pulled the card from his pants pocket and handed it over.

  Bishop checked the address again: 904 West Wilson Avenue. And the zip code was AZ 85128. He joined the two numbers together and tried 9048 on the first lock, and got nothing. He tried it on the other lock. Same result. But on the upper right of the card, just above the issue and expiry dates, was the fake licence number itself: 024357695. It was also eight digits long, if you discounted the zero.

  Bishop thumbed the left-hand dial to read 2435. He slid the release tab to the side. There was a click and the latch snapped open.

  ‘All right,’ Dario said.

  ‘Hey, you cracked it,’ Rylander said.

  Bishop tried 7695 on the other rotary dial. He slid the release tab to the side. There was another click and that latch snapped open too.

  He quickly glanced at the three anxious faces above him, then he opened the briefcase.


  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Lining the black, padded, faux-leather interior were stacks of used fifty-dollar bills, each one wrapped in a blank paper currency band. Bishop guessed there were maybe fifteen or sixteen stacks altogether. And assuming each stack contained a hundred notes, that meant there was somewhere between seventy and eighty grand in there. So it looked as though Strickland wasn’t the only one who believed in keeping a little extra tucked away for emergencies. Not that it had done him much good in the long run.

  Rylander’s eyes were wide. ‘Whoa.’

  ‘Is that for real?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t be much point in locking it all away if it wasn’t,’ Bishop said.

  Money wasn’t all the case contained, though. He’d already spotted a flash of something grey under one of the stacks. He moved the money out of the way and underneath was a Sony microcassette recorder. It was only a small thing, measuring about twelve inches by six. He opened the front lid and inside was a TDK MC-60 cassette, wound back to the beginning.

  Bishop had never seen anything so beautiful.

  He almost smiled until he remembered the tape could contain anything. There were no certainties yet. He pulled the cassette from the player, pressed the Play button and watched as the two sprocket wheels began rotating in tandem. So even after all this time, the batteries were still working. That was good. He replaced the cassette and snapped the lid shut.

  He looked up at Dario. ‘There. Didn’t I tell you?’

  But Dario’s concentration was on the stacks of money in the case. The young hood lifted one of the bundles and flipped through it slowly. He smiled just as slowly, his mouth making smacking sounds as he continued to chew his gum. He stuffed the money in the left-hand pocket of his leather jacket, and then pulled out three more wads. They went into the same pocket.

  ‘That’s not your money,’ Bishop said.

  ‘Sure it is,’ Dario said, grinning. ‘Look.’

  He reached down and grabbed the rest of the money and stuffed the wads in his other jacket pockets. ‘You got a problem with that, amigo?’

  Bishop ignored him and turned to Emily. ‘Look, I really want to thank you two for helping me out here, but you should probably head on back now. I think the less you’re seen with me, the better.’

  Rylander was frowning at Dario. ‘Yeah, I think he’s right, Em.’

  ‘Okay,’ Emily said. ‘I really hope things work out for you, Bishop.’

  ‘You and me both,’ he said. ‘Thanks again.’

  She nodded once, then she and her husband went over and got in the Chevy. Bishop watched as Rylander started the engine and slowly backed out of the space until they were pointing the way they’d come. As they pulled away, Bishop slid the now-empty briefcase into the van’s interior and stood up, still holding the microcassette recorder.

  Dario slid the side door shut. ‘I wanna hear this tape.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ Bishop said. ‘Let’s get inside first.’

  Because if it turned out the recording was no use to him, he’d be in a much better position to put Dario out of action if they were both sitting in the front seats. He’d already decided that a knife-hand strike to the throat would probably work best, although he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

  He opened the driver’s door and got in. Dario got in the passenger side. Shutting his door, Bishop thumbed the cassette recorder’s volume control to its maximum setting, set the machine down on the dashboard and pressed Play.

  FIFTY-NINE

  First, there were some muffled clattering noises as the recorder was turned off, then on again. This was followed by a high-pitched giggling, then a child’s voice said, ‘And thank you for that, studio. I’m gonna—’ Something covered the microphone for a few moments, and then the same voice said, ‘Hey, no way. You’re not allowed to touch it, Julia. Mom told you before, it’s my present, and you gotta wait your turn. You ain’t—’ This was followed by sounds of a scuffle, as though somebody was trying to grab hold of the cassette recorder.

  The voice had sounded as though it belonged to a boy. Maybe five or six years old.

  ‘Hey, what is this shit?’ Dario said.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Bishop said.

  The unidentified sounds suddenly stopped and another child’s voice said, ‘Okay, get on with it then.’ This once sounded female, so possibly the aforementioned Julia. And she sounded a little older than the boy. Seven or eight, maybe.

  The boy said, ‘Okay, then. Right. So, like I was saying, thank you, studio. And now … and now this is ace reporter Richy Hartnell at the scene, reporting for ABC …’

  Bishop and Dario glanced at each other at the mention of Hartnell. Sounded like these two were his own kids then. And from the sounds of it, it was either Christmas or this Richy’s birthday.

  The boy went on, ‘… and yes, the fire is totally out of control now and I think they’re gonna have to call in the army to put it out.’

  ‘That’s the fire brigade, stinko,’ the little girl said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Army’s for riots and wars and things. Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Shut up, Julia. You’re the stinko, not me. And you gotta wait until I ask you the questions. You can’t just say stuff when you want.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Ask your dumb questions before the tape runs out.’

  ‘Right. Okay, then. So you saw what started this fire, right, Miss?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. It was this big fat elephant with wings, and he kept aiming his trunk at the buildings and rays of fire shot out of his trunk, and one of them hit …’

  Both kids collapsed into uncontrollable giggles that went on for about ten seconds. This was soon followed by more clattering noises as the boy messed around with the Pause and Play controls.

  Dario gave a loud sigh and turned his face to the window. On the tape, Bishop heard silence for a while, and then the sound of somebody knocking on a door. ‘Can I come in, Daddy?’ the boy said.

  There followed the sound of a door opening. Then a deep male voice said, ‘Hey, if it isn’t my little birthday boy. You enjoying all your presents?’

  ‘I’m a reporter for ABC, Daddy,’ the boy said. ‘I’m here to interview you.’

  ‘A reporter, huh? Well, I don’t know about that. What about?’

  ‘You know. Stuff. And you too, Uncle Dom.’

  So it was Hartnell and Callaway, both in the same room.

  ‘Well, as long as it’s short, Richy,’ Hartnell said. ‘Daddy’s working, you know? What do you want to ask us?’

  Bishop heard something that could have been somebody sitting on a leather seat, or a couch. Then the boy said, ‘Okay, you first, Daddy. I’ve just got a report that all the animals in the zoo have been let out of the cages. Now when the rhino and the lion get into a fight with each other, who do you think’s gonna win?’

  ‘Well, I’d have to go with the lion on that one, what with him being a carnivore and all. And let’s not forget those teeth.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the boy said. ‘And what about you, mister?’

  ‘I don’t think you can rule out the rhino,’ a familiar voice said. Callaway. It was him all right. ‘That horn of his could do a lot of damage, Richy.’

  The boy coughed. ‘Yes, I see. Thank you, sir. Now I’d like to ask you about the dinosaurs. If a Tyrannosaurus—’

  A woman’s voice suddenly interrupted them. ‘Richy, what are you doing in here?’

  ‘I’m interviewing people for ABC News, Mom.’

  ‘You know you can’t interrupt Daddy in his office like this. Come on, now. Let’s go to the kitchen where Daisy’s making lunch.’

  ‘But, Mom—’

  ‘No buts. Come on now. Let Daddy get back to work.’

  ‘Better do what Mom says,’ Hartnell said. ‘You can finish up some other time.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ There was a muffled scuffling and then a few seconds later, the sound of a door being closed.

  Hartnel
l’s voice said, ‘So where were we?’

  Bishop smiled to himself, and watched Dario slowly turn from the window to listen. It was obvious to both what had happened. The boy must have not only left the cassette recorder in Hartnell’s office, but left the tape still running as well.

  ‘I was only saying you had nothing to worry about, Felix,’ Callaway said. ‘I kept things tight all down the line and I’ve cleaned up after myself. Of the five men I used for the job, only one’s still walking around, and I’ll be taking care of him tomorrow night.’

  ‘Which one is it?’

  ‘Ayers. It’s all arranged. It’ll look like a gangland dispute that got out of hand.’

  ‘Why can’t you do it today? Or tonight?’

  ‘We set up this whole meet a week ago and if I change it now, he’ll suspect something’s up. Also, one of the men I’m using is finishing up another job right now.’

  There was a sigh. ‘All right, but the sooner this is all sealed up, Dom, the better. I don’t need to tell you that if our wetback friend ever discovered we were the ones behind his sister’s death, there’d be war on the streets. You know how emotional they get down there. If Rafael ever got his hands on us …’ He left the sentence unfinished.

  Bishop’s heart was already beating a mile a minute. The tape was turning out to be everything he could have hoped for and more.

  ‘Yeah, I read you,’ Callaway said. ‘But after tomorrow there won’t be anyone left who can connect us to that whole mess. And now Rafael’s got his bloodlust out of his system, everybody’s happy again.’

  ‘Well, let’s wait until tomorrow before we start celebrating. Come see me once it’s done, okay?’

  ‘Naturally. I better shoot off now. I still got a few details I need to finalize. Want me to send Mechner through on my way out?’

  ‘Yeah. Send him through.’

  Bishop reached over and pressed the Stop button. They’d heard the most important part, the rest they could hear back at the apartment. But it sounded to Bishop as though Mechner had been summoned by the boss for whatever reason and sat in the same spot Richy had been sitting. He must have seen the tape was still running, decided it was an opportunity he couldn’t ignore, and taken it away with him to listen to later. Which had been a pretty risky move for him at the time. But one for which Bishop was now profoundly grateful.