by Rick Blechta
“No! That’s not what’s going to happen!”
“I’m afraid we don’t work that way over here. We let our professionals handle things—and we certainly don’t need nor want the help of private operatives from Canada.”
Shannon’s anger and frustration boiled over. “I will be involved, or you don’t get the information I have, and when the shit hits the fan, buster, I’m going to make sure you get it square in the face.”
Campbell remained stodgily unruffled. “Withholding information from the police will get you in a great deal of trouble.”
“Look, do you want to nail the murderers of Angus MacDougall, bust an American crime boss and recover three hundred kilos of heroin? That’s what I’m talking about.”
He went quiet. After a good ten seconds, Shannon asked, “Are you still there?”
“I’m listening.”
She quickly and concisely outlined Gia’s plan. “But until I call Michael’s cell phone, we’ll have no idea where this is going to go down. It could be anywhere, but I’m sure it’s reasonably near Glasgow, because I told them in the earlier call that’s where I was headed. How flexible can your people be in getting around? If the bad guys get even a whiff of cop, bad things are going to happen.”
“We’ll be ready. Trust me on that.”
She wished she could. She was sure Campbell did everything by the book, and this little caper was likely going to prove to be anything but by the book.
“I’ll call your office when I speak to the kidnappers again, and I’ll hold off on that call as long as I can to give you time to get your end organized. Agreed?”
“You just do what you’ve outlined, and we’ll manage our part just fine.”
She hung up. “I hope Campbell comes through. One thing you can be sure of, he’s going to be burning up the phone lines between now and when we call back, checking out everything he can. If he doesn’t like what he hears, he’ll pull the plug. I’ve worked with cops like him before.”
Gia made a disgusted face. “He is such a bloody wanker! And that’s why we’re not telling him where we’re going until the very last minute.”
This time Shannon’s jaw did drop. “You mean you know where they’ve got Michael?”
“Sure. I rented the house for them.”
“What?”
“Relax. It’s all part of my plan. I also have two of my people working for Mastrocolle. You didn’t expect he could come over here and not need local help, did you?”
“You mean you knew Michael was going to be kidnapped today?”
She shrugged. “Actually, I was thinking it would be tomorrow or the next day. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d figure out so quickly who I really am.” Gia patted Shannon’s knee. “And it looks like ya done good, kiddo. Know what I mean?”
Gia’s accent was dead on New York. Shannon shivered.
***
It took four long minutes for them to bring Shannon and the girl into the room. I know. I felt every single second.
I heard Shannon’s gasp when she saw me slumped over on the chair. I wanted the bad guys to think I was a lot worse off than I was. I didn’t know what good it would do, but I figured it might give me a little edge.
Someone spoke. “We followed her from before the restaurant, Mr. M. Everything’s cool.”
The old man spoke. “You might as well take that stupid bag off his head, then.”
Mastrocolle was much less impressive than I would have imagined, given his reputation. The American press referred to him as Mad Dog Mastrocolle, but he seemed about as imposing as a beagle. Shrunken and old, his skin had a gray pallor that made me think he might be seriously ill.
Shannon wanted to come over to me, but someone stopped her until the old man gave a signal.
Crouching down in front of me, she said, “You look like hell.”
“I’ve certainly felt better.”
Reaching around to my hands, she stood and said, “Can’t you cut these ties? His hands are like ice!”
Again, the old gangster waved his hand, and someone came forward to do his bidding. Finally, I could get some relief for the aching muscles in my arms and legs. Shannon kissed my cheek and quickly whispered, “We have a plan.”
If it involved running within the next two days, I might not be able to take part.
Someone else was pushed forward, and I involuntarily gasped: Giovanna.
The way Shannon had been describing her, I expected some swagger, but she seemed helpless, completely bewildered and very, very frightened. That night she’d jumped in my car, she had displayed something approaching haughtiness. There was none of that now. Quite frankly, she looked like a scared little girl.
Shannon said to Mastrocolle, “I’ve brought you the girl. Now I think you should show your gratitude by letting Michael and me go.”
One of the Americans handed his boss a flat plastic bag with something white in it. “She had this with her.”
“I just wanted to prove to you that the girl still has your shipment. Do we have a deal?”
“You will be silent!” Mastrocolle roared with a strength that belied his physical state. “Or I will have you all killed now!”
The mobster continued to stare up at Giovanna intently, but not just at her face. Her coat was open, revealing a striking, flower print dress. Shannon stepped back to stand next to me, her hand on my shoulder, just vibrating with tension. What the heck was going on?
Mastrocolle spoke to Giovanna. “You look different than the first time I saw you. I never noticed before... Where did you get that dress?”
Her accent was pure Brummy. “It belonged to my mother. It was her favourite.”
The old man’s eyes grew wide, but Giovanna’s answer seemed to snap him out of his reverie. “Where is the rest of my merchandise?” he barked, indicating the bag on his lap.
Giovanna suddenly threw herself to the ground at his knees and began wailing, “Please don’t kill me! I didn’t know what was going on until it was too late. I didn’t know who you were. He made me help him. There was nothing I could do. I swear it!” Then she pointed back at Shannon. “And this is all a set-up. She brought the cops with her!”
“Why you little—” Shannon started forward, then gasped and went rigid before pitching forward onto the carpet. The goddamned American held the stun gun against her neck for several more seconds as Shannon writhed on the ground.
“Stop it, you bastard!” I shrieked, trying to leap to her aid and knock that horrible thing from the man’s hands, but two pair of strong arms grabbed me from behind and forced me back down.
The American finally stood up and sneered. “Looking for another jolt, my friend? Well, just come to papa.”
To drive his point home, he depressed the button on his baton and blue sparks crackled evilly between the two electrodes.
Knowing I could easily wind up in the same state as before, I gave up struggling. Both of us being down for the count would not be good.
Shannon lay on the rug in a very bad state, gasping and moaning.
Everyone turned back to Mastrocolle and found him sitting rigidly upright in his chair. Giovanna held a thin, nasty-looking blade against his throat.
Guns suddenly appeared in everyone’s hands. Giovanna didn’t flinch. “If anyone even breathes wrong, your precious boss’s blood will be all over the floor. Got that?”
The change in Giovanna’s demeanor was galvanic. Her eyes blazed triumphantly, all weakness and subservience wiped away as she snarled at the roomful of criminals in the New York accent I was more used to. One minute she’d been cowering on the floor, and the next she had a knife, seemingly conjured from thin air, at the old man’s throat. It made my poor head spin.
Was it all part of “the plan”? I hadn’t got the impression Shannon was acting when she’d lunged at Giovanna.
“What do you want?” Mastrocolle asked tonelessly as he continued to stare at Giovanna with that curious fixed expression.
She bent over and s
aid something softly in his ear.
The old man’s eyes opened wide. “You? It cannot be true!”
“Do you doubt the truth your eyes are telling you?” Giovanna asked, then continued in very rapid, angry-sounding Italian.
Mastrocolle answered back in that language, his complexion greyer than ever.
Giovanna shook her head and hissed, “Vendetta!” Then turned to me and said, “Michael, pick Shannon up and get her the hell out of here. There’s a French door just behind me.” Two men in the room took a step forward. “Don’t!” she warned.
The knife blade must have moved, because a trickle of blood slid down Mastrocolle’s neck.
I knew better than to start asking questions, not in a roomful of thugs with guns in their hands.
Shannon was a complete dead weight in my arms, conscious, but just barely. The blast she’d endured from the stun gun had been longer than either of the ones I’d been nailed with. As I picked her up, I glared at the American, wanting nothing more than to grab that thing away from him, press it against his skin and hold the button down for at least ten minutes. Bastard!
It felt rather strange to be the only person moving in a room of totally frozen people.
I had trouble at the door, not being able to open it and hold Shannon because of my wobbly state, so I had to put her down. It was locked with no sign of the key, so I picked up a nearby chair and smashed out all of the glass
As I picked Shannon up again, all hell broke loose around the house. Shrill police whistles began blowing from all directions.
Pushing through the ruins of the door, I heard a loud whoosh behind me, then guns started going off. I needed no more urging to get my arse in gear, and I trotted Shannon along the front of the house and around the corner.
The house was built into a hillside covered in small trees and shrubs, some sort of garden. Passage was impossible where I was, so I shifted Shannon up over my shoulder and stumbled back a few yards until I found a path going up. The best thing I could do was put as much distance as possible between us and the house.
The night was dark and the ground slippery from a recent rain, but I managed about a hundred feet before my reserves started giving out. I gently laid Shannon down.
“What happened?” she asked in a raspy voice.
“You got zapped.”
“Taser?”
“I don’t know. Something like that. You okay?”
She managed a feeble smile. “If you define okay as feeling like a piece of overdone spaghetti.”
The gunfire had stopped, but there was a lot of shouting down below. I moved a few steps back down the path until I could see the house again. Smoke was floating past the flapping curtain on the door I’d trashed. Below me I saw a shadow flit in front of the meagre light, then another. They were headed my way.
I raced back to Shannon, threw her over my shoulder and took off as fast as I could. Thirty feet farther, the path opened up into a clearing about twenty feet across. Logs were piled up there, as I found when I nearly tripped over some. Putting Shannon down again where she could lean against a tree trunk, I turned my head to listen.
Someone was definitely coming. Needing a weapon, I thought of the logs, not much use against guns but better than nothing. I found something far more useful: a yellow log splitter. I settled back into the shadows beside the path and waited. Someone was going to get it.
The first person was on me before I could even react—which turned out to be a good thing as it was Giovanna.
She saw me move a bit. “Michael?”
“Yes.”
“There’s someone right behind me. You’d better stop him!”
With that, she took off across the clearing and disappeared into the trees on the far side.
If I hadn’t heard her approach, I certainly heard the next person as he huffed and puffed and stumbled in the gloom. I waited until the perfect moment and swung, connecting with his midsection with the side of the splitter, wanting only to stop him, not commit murder. He fell to the ground gasping, and I leapt forward ready to give him another if he needed it.
“You’re lucky if you haven’t killed him, swinging like that,” Shannon called out to me.
His loud groans told me I hadn’t.
Going back to Shannon, I asked again, “Are you all right?”
She reached up and touched my cheek. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. We better get back down the hill, though. Campbell must be wondering where the hell I’ve gotten to.”
“He’s here?”
“Where else do you think all those cops came from?”
The guy I’d slugged moaned a bit, and she added, “You better tie him up with your shoelaces. We’ll let Campbell’s men fetch him.”
It took longer than I would have expected to make our way back down the path. At least Shannon could stumble along with me propping her up. I couldn’t have managed carrying her downhill in the dark.
We met two uniformed policemen near the bottom and explained who we were.
“There’s a bad guy up the path a ways,” I told them. “He’s injured, but he’s not dead.”
They disappeared up the hill.
We made our way past the broken door and along the front of the house to the gravel driveway. It was chock full of police cars, blue lights flashing everywhere, the whole scene looking like a Hollywood movie.
Campbell was standing next to one of the few unmarked cars. “Where did you two get to?” he asked, looking rather put out.
By the time we finished telling him what had happened, he’d had the good sense to invite us into his car, because we were shivering so violently. Pairs of constables kept trooping by with thugs in handcuffs between them, leading them to a paddy wagon parked at the bottom of the drive.
“Well, we’ve rounded up just about all of them,” he said. “Only the wee lassie seems to have got away. We’re bringing in dogs, and we’ll have her shortly. She won’t get far in the woods at night.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s past two a.m. Do you think we can go?”
“I don’t see why not. Your rental is boxed in, but I’ll see what I can do. Wait here.”
While they moved cars so we could get down the drive to the pavement below, one of the officers brought us mugs of steaming tea.
“Remember me?” Constable Dickson asked. “You still doing those concerts this week?”
“I hope so.”
“Great! It would be a shame if it got cancelled. Your Rolly said he’d fix me up with a ticket and all.”
“Give me your notebook, and I’ll write down Rolly’s number at the Hilton for you. Give him a call. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.”
As the excited officer shut the car door again, Shannon turned to me. “Michael, you are positively evil!”
She still looked pretty fuzzy around the edges, but the tea had put a bit of life back into her face.
I put my arm around her. “You know, we’ve been pretty damned lucky tonight.”
She relaxed against me. “You got that right!”
About five minutes later, Campbell returned with news that the rental was now waiting at the bottom of the hill. “You’ll be staying in Dunoon overnight then?”
“I guess so.”
“Please be so kind as to stop by the police station tomorrow before driving back to Glasgow.”
“When we were stumbling back down the hill earlier, we saw smoke coming out of the sitting room. What happened?”
“The girl Miss O’Brien brought with her had a smoke bomb of some kind. When you broke the window, she set it off and got away.”
Shannon sat up. “And Mastrocolle?”
“Dead. Someone slit his throat.”
She slumped back and put her head down. “I should have expected that would be the inevitable conclusion.”
I put my arm around her and gave a big squeeze.
(Transcript of an interview broadcast on BBC 1, presenter: James Bailey)
JB
: I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with the “silent man” of Neurotica yesterday, the reclusive Michael Quicksilver.
Approaching the interview cautiously, since he has a legendary distaste for speaking with my ilk, I found him to be fairly open and relatively warm. This is the first interview he’s granted in twentytwo years. Here’s how it all went down.
Thanks for agreeing to speak with me, Michael.
MQ: (laughs) Well, I can’t say that I’ve been looking forward to it, but I’ve agreed to speak to you lads, and that’s what I’m going to do.
JB: First off, why now? You’re back with your old mates—and sounding every bit as good as ever, I might add—but from what Rolly’s said over the years, this wasn’t something anyone ever expected. I mean, frankly, since 1982 you’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.
MQ: Contrary to popular belief, I have been on earth all that time, just not in the music world.
JB: But why now?
MQ: Well, I can’t say the event that caused us to do this concert is the sort of thing one looks forward to, but it seemed the right thing to do under the circumstances. Angus was always after me to rejoin the group, but for personal reasons, I never wanted to. I’m only sorry he won’t be here to see us—in the flesh, that is. I’d like to think he’ll be somewhere around, though.
JB: So tell us what it’s like playing the old songs again.
MQ: (thinking) Surprisingly nice. It was quite amazing how fast I slipped into it again—we all slipped into it, I should say. I had to relearn much of the material, of course, but as we rehearse, I find myself playing things that weren’t on the original recordings I worked from. You know, my mind just sort of floats free, and all of a sudden I’m playing something different. If I think about it, though, I realize that they were changes I made to my parts after though, I realize that they were changes I made to my parts after the recordings were completed. It’s pretty freaky the first couple of times that happens. I’m going like, “Where the bloody hell did that come from?” Since we’re taking a look at the arrangement of each song anyway, a lot of that is getting pulled in and used. I think the audience is going to be pleasantly surprised.