by Nick Oldham
Hi-tec machines surrounding the bed monitored her functions. Kovaks looked quickly at the displays. They all seemed to be pinging healthily enough.
He took a deep breath and approached the bed.
He wasn’t sure how long it was that he stood there. Two minutes. Could have been twenty.
‘ Mr Kovaks?’
He jumped back into the real world and turned round. A young man in a classy suit offered a hand. Kovaks took it and they shook. Kovaks’ puzzlement was cleared up when the man said, ‘I’m the surgeon who operated on Chrissy. Dr Jefferson. I believe you’re her boyfriend?’
‘ We live together as man and wife. We were going to get married.’
‘ Right, right.’
‘ So, how is she? No bullshit, please.’
‘ Come — let’s discuss it out here.’ He indicated the corridor.
Kovaks followed him out, amazed at how young and inexperienced he appeared. He couldn’t have been over thirty, with a face like a baby, all chubby and rubicund. But he exuded an air of confidence and ability that Kovaks found reassuring, coupled with an outwardly relaxed persona.
The doctor leaned against the wall and waited for a couple of chattering nurses to pass. He cleared his throat. ‘Right… obviously she’s very badly burned. The device, or whatever you want to call it, was designed to pour out a flash of flame as the recipient opened the envelope. Normally that would result in hand, facial and neck burns. I say normally because most recipients would probably be fully clothed when opening mail. Chrissy hadn’t got dressed.’
‘ Which makes it worse?’ The doctor nodded.
‘ She works late.’ Kovaks felt he had to explain her nakedness for some reason. ‘She’d probably got straight out of bed when she heard it fall through the door. We can hear mail coming in quite clearly from the bedroom. ‘
The surgeon shrugged. ‘Whatever.’ He went on: ‘The problem is that there was no protection whatsoever from any clothing. Therefore much of her chest, upper arms and neck were burned as well as her hands and face. It was actually the left side of her face that took the brunt of the flames. The right side is hardly touched at all. A great deal of her hair has been burned off too.’
‘ So what’s the bottom line? What’s the future?’
‘ At this early stage it’s difficult to say. She will be badly scarred, but plastic surgery can do wonders. She’ll be OK physically. Her eyes are unharmed and in itself, her body remains in good shape. It’s the mental side that’ll be the biggest problem. All I can say is this: don’t think too much of the future at the moment. Let’s take each day as it comes. She’ll need a great deal of support,’ he added.
Kovaks nodded. His eyes watered over. ‘She’ll get it,’ he said resolutely, biting his bottom lip, trying to hold back the tears.
The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good man. Does she have some family?’
‘ Chicago. I’ll speak to them.’
‘ OK. I don’t think there’s much point in you staying around here at this time, Mr Kovaks. She’ll be sleeping for many hours yet. If you want to be here when she wakes up, come in tomorrow about eight a.m. But go and get some rest yourself. You’ve had a very exacting day so far and you’ll need all your strength for Chrissy… won’t you?’ He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
‘ Yeah, you’re right,’ said Kovaks, acknowledging the sense. ‘Look, if you don’t mind I’ll have a few more minutes with her before I go.’
‘ By all means.’ They shook hands again. ‘Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘ Thanks, Doc.’
He watched the surgeon walk away and thought that he rather liked the man. Talked straight from the hip, as it were. He believed Chrissy was in safe hands, which took a weight off his mind.
Kovaks spent a few minutes sat by Chrissy’s bed, staring blankly at her, listening to the shallow breathing, his mind in turmoil. He wondered what the future would hold for them. Not eight hours ago it was very rosy. Now it was all upside down, with its guts twisted out and fed to the scavengers. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing her opening the package, just as he’d done. The whoosh of the flames. Her screams of terror.
Bastard. Whoever had done it. Bastard. It was a warning, wasn’t it? And at that moment in his life, there was only one possible source — Corelli. The Mafia godfather had just told the FBI to go fuck themselves.
At the door he took one last look at Chrissy. She stirred momentarily, then moaned slightly. He willed his thoughts to transfer from his mind to hers, to penetrate the pain and the drugged state. I will be there for you, he told her. Whatever happens, whatever the outcome. And whoever has done this to you will suffer. They have bitten off more than they can chew. I’ll find them, I promise you, and justice will be done. I promise you. I love you.
With that he turned and walked out.
In the hospital foyer his heart dropped as he saw the waiting, predatory figure of Lisa Want, accompanied by a photographer. The camera flashed a dozen times.
Then Lisa Want swooped on him like an osprey on a fish. Her portable tape-recorder was running.
‘ How is she, Joe?’
Kovaks stopped dead and opened his hands wide as if to say, ‘Got me.’
He looked levelly at her, then said, ‘If you don’t get out of my way, Ms Want, I’ll break that fuckin’ tape-recorder over your head and shove the batteries right up your pretty little ass — and you can quote me.’ He shoved past her.
Unfazed, she persisted. ‘Agent Kovaks, is it true that you also received a letter bomb, which failed to explode?’
No reply. It was true, of course. But how the hell did she know? ‘Is it also true that it was wired not to explode?’
No reply. But also true. According to the bomb disposal expert who’d defused the device, it was a real live bomb but wired purposely not to detonate. Its sole purpose, therefore, was to frighten its recipient. But again, how the hell did she know? The office had decided that news of this package would not be released to the media, so who had told her?
‘ Why do you think you received the bomb? Is someone warning or threatening you to keep off a case? Is this all connected with your ongoing investigation into the Corelli crime family? How do you feel? Are you intimidated? Has Chrissy regained consciousness yet? Can we get in for a photograph of her? How is your investigation progressing? Are you going to answer any of these fucking questions or not? Come on, Joe, give me something!’
Kovaks paused at the door. ‘Turn that off,’ he said, pointing to the tape-recorder.
Meekly, she obliged.
‘ It’s quite obvious to me that you’ve already been given something, Lisa. Some of the questions you’ve asked indicate to me that someone ill the FBI office in Miami is feeding you stuff you shouldn’t know. I haven’t a clue who it is and I don’t think you’ll tell me’ — here she opened her mouth to protest — ‘no, don’t speak,’ he ordered her. ‘Let me finish. I know you’ll deny it and that’s fair enough, but I’ll tell you this: when I find out who it is, whoever it is, regardless of rank, gender, race, length of service, length of penis, whatever, whoever — when I find them, they’ll wish they’d never been born, never joined the FBI, never fucked you. Their feet won’t touch the fuckin’ ground — and nor will yours, because I’ll go for your throat too and you’ll be before a court faster than you come. Now, if you want to turn that machine back on, I’ll give you a comment.’
Speechless, she pressed the record buttons.
‘ No comment,’ he said, smiled, turned and walked out of the hospital.
Kovaks drove home in a bleak, black mood. He hit the bottle and his mood became darker and deadlier. How could he prove that Corelli was the man behind the bombs? The simple answer was that he couldn’t. It wasn’t as though Corelli, or even one of his hired hands, would go to the trouble of popping round or phoning to say, ‘Back off — you’ve been warned.’ Corelli would just assume that Kovaks was intelligent enough to get the message.
And now that Whisper was dead — the only chink in Corelli’s ring of steel- there was no way they could tie Hinksman and Corelli together. Everything he’d told Kovaks before being knifed to death wasn’t worth the breath it had been whispered on.
They were as far away as ever.
Once again, Corelli was out of reach. Untouchable.
Kovaks had started with a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s. A quarter of it had slid effortlessly down to his empty stomach and then very quickly up to his head, clouding his judgement.
Drink makes people do rash things.
Holding the bottle by the neck, he stormed out of the apartment down the blackened, burned hallway — and out to his car on the street below.
Without hesitation, other than the drunken delay caused by the problem of getting the key in the ignition, he drove south towards Miami.
He drove quickly, recklessly, with no regard for other road-users. With one hand gripping the wheel and one hand around the bottle, frequently necking mouthfuls of the fiery liquid contained therein, he was fortunate not to have caused a serious accident.
Once in Miami itself, he did a left onto MacArthur Causeway and headed out in the direction of Miami Beach and the Art Deco section where Corelli had a house. It was a 1930s mansion really, surrounded by a high wall, high security and a two-acre manicured garden with peacocks and arty statues.
Kovaks drew up at the high, wrought-iron gates. They stayed closed. A camera up on the wall focused on him and he waved at it. Still nothing happened. He staggered out of the driver’s seat and rang the intercom set in the wall.
‘ Yeah?’ came a voice. Friendly? No.
‘ FBI — let me in. I wanna see Corelli,’ slurred the agent.
‘ Goodbye.’ The intercom went dead.
Kovaks continued to lean on the buzzer whilst peering drunkenly through the gates up towards the house which was discreetly half-hidden by trees and topiary.
Eventually the front door of the house opened and two men in tracksuits meandered down the driveway. They walked on the balls of their feet. A tough guy’s walk. Rolling shoulders, twisting hips. Smug. Each man carried a pump action shotgun. Kovaks recognised them as a couple of Corelli’s minor heavies. He sneered at them, the drink making him much braver than he should have been under the circumstances.
They arrived at the gate. Their expressions remained impassive but superior. One stood slightly behind the other, to one side, the shotgun held across his chest. The one at the front did the talking.
‘ What you want?’
‘ I wanna see Corelli — OK, bud?’
‘ Go away.’
‘ Let me see him.’
‘ You gotta warrant?’
‘ Don’t need one — I’m backed by the power of Federal law,’ Kovaks spat stupidly.
‘ Bye bye,’ said the talking heavy. To reinforce his statement he laid the barrel of his shotgun on a cross member in the gate, pointing the weapon about chest-height at Kovaks. He pumped it. It was a deadly sound. ‘You don’t go right now, I’ll have to phone the cops and tell ‘em I had to shoot a drunken intruder.’
Kovaks stiffened. The insinuation got through his drunkenness. ‘I just want to talk to Corelli,’ he said.
‘ Well, he ain’t here.’
‘ Where is he, then — Key West?’
The heavy checked his watch. ‘By now he’s about halfway across the Atlantic.’
‘ Why, where’s he going?’ Kovaks asked too quickly, making the heavy realise he’d said too much.
‘ Just shove it, man,’ he said, beginning to lose his cool, his voice rising up towards agitation. ‘You don’t go, I pull this trigger.’
Kovaks conceded defeat and rolled back into his car. He slammed it into reverse and screeched backwards out of the driveway. He pulled away with the flourish of a boy racer, a finger for the two heavies and a head out of the window shouting, ‘Fuck you, assholes!’ It was the most original insult his drink-sodden mind could manage.
He reached across the passenger seat, swerving dangerously into, then out of, the path of an oncoming car, and fumbled for the bottle of JD. With an angry horn sounding in his ears he took a hefty swig of what should have been sipped without spilling a drop. He was quite proud of the accomplishment.
‘ So he’s goin’ to England, eh?’ Kovaks murmured. ‘Better let that cunt Donaldson know.’
His right foot went down heavy on the accelerator and the big engine roared with pleasure as it picked up speed.
Halfway back across MacArthur Causeway he heard a distinctive sound right behind him: the shriek of a police patrol car siren, the one blast that meant ‘pull over.’ Kovaks checked his rearview mirror and saw the car behind him, two officers on board, roof-lights flashing. He drew into the side of the road as smoothly as his state would allow and stopped with a lurch. He rested his hands on the top of the steering wheel where they could be seen.
One of the officers stayed half-in, half-out of the patrol car. The other one approached Kovaks with the caution of bad experience and good training. His right hand rested significantly on the butt of his holstered revolver.
Kovaks stayed where he was and awaited instructions.
‘ Get out of the car, please sir, and place your hands on the roof.
Re-al slow, like.’
Kovaks obeyed every word to the letter.
At the end of these formalities, when it had been established that Kovaks was unarmed, the officer said, ‘Is this your car, sir?’
‘ It is.’
‘ We’ve received a report of a possible drunk driver in the Art Deco area, in a red Trans-Am.’
‘ Who made the report, officer?’ Kovaks enquired politely.
‘ Anonymous caller, sir — but obviously correct. I can smell alcohol on your breath, your eyes are glazed over and you have slurred some of your words. I therefore suspect you to be drinking and driving. I am therefore requesting you to provide a breath specimen for a breathalyser test.’
‘ I don’t suppose it’ll make a difference if I tell you I’m a Federal Agent?’ he asked hopefully.
‘ You don’t suppose right, sir.’
Kovaks closed his eyes in despair. Bubbled by the Mafia. The perfect end to a fucking perfect day.
Chapter Fifteen
The wide-bodied jet touched down smoothly at Manchester Airport, despite the strongly gusting cross-winds. As is the norm in many airports now, the arrival was not heralded by tannoy, but merely blipped up on the numerous TV monitors dotted around the terminus.
Henry Christie and Karl Donaldson watched the plane taxi to the gate and the motorised steps be driven, rather like small, controllable dinosaurs, to the front and rear doors of the plane. The doors were heaved open and after a pause the first of the passengers began to disembark.
Donaldson held his breath.
Henry noted his tension.
Then the American said, ‘That’s him,’ and pointed. ‘The guy in the suit. He’s brought one of his goons with him.’
Henry looked through his binoculars, focused them on Corelli as he clambered down the steps at the front of the plane.
‘ So that’s what a Mafia godfather looks like. Looks more like a grandfather,’ commented Henry.
‘ Don’t let looks deceive you. That’s one of his strengths. People are taken in by him.’
‘ But I’m well pissed off with this,’ Henry moaned. ‘He just doesn’t fit my stereotype. Isn’t life complicated?’
‘ Sure is, Henry,’ Donaldson muttered bleakly.
Henry gave Donaldson a sidelong glance and wondered what was on his mind. ‘Let’s get down to Customs,’ he said, ‘and make his entry into Limey as uncomfortable as possible.’
‘ Good idea,’ agreed Donaldson, pleased at the prospect. ‘Pity that the only way we can get at the bastard is by getting him stopped and searched. He should be on Death Row by rights.’
They began to make their way down from the public viewing gallery.
>
Donaldson thought about the rushed telephone call he’d received about two hours earlier from Joe Kovaks. He’d called from the cop shop in Miami where he’d been taken following his drink-drive arrest. He’d been released after giving a blood sample which would be analysed before any court proceedings, but they wouldn’t give him his car keys back until he provided them with a negative specimen of breath. So he’d been very unhappy.
Even though the situation had been pretty tragic for Kovaks, Donaldson could barely contain his mirth at the predicament and its irony; the bare-faced cheek of the Mafia and how one quick phone call had put Kovaks’ job on the line — because the FBI had a tough policy on lawbreakers within its own ranks. Drink-driving in particular was frowned upon. Several agents had been fired because of it. But Donaldson’s amusement had waned, then turned to anger and horror when Kovaks told him about Chrissy… and then burst into tears down the phone.
The two lawmen had already introduced themselves to Customs and the airport police. They took up a position behind screens, together with one of the airport detectives and a Customs officer, from where they could see through one-way windows into the baggage reclaim hall and both Customs channels, green and red: Nothing To Declare and Goods To Declare.
By prior arrangement two armed cops — with revolvers and MP5s on open display — had been posted to the Customs area. Not that problems were expected. Corelli wasn’t stupid. They simply wanted the godfather to feel under pressure when the uniformed Customs officers singled him out from the other passengers in order to search his luggage.
It all went according to plan.
Corelli and his aide collected their bags from the conveyor belt.
Corelli had a small sports bag, his aide a large suitcase and flight bag. They placed them on a trolley and headed to the green channel.
The Customs officer with the detectives spoke quietly into his radio. The uniformed officers in the green channel nodded at their boss’s instructions which they received via their earpieces.
Corelli and his man came into view.
The two armed cops were clearly visible.