The Mechanic Trilogy: the complete boxset

by Rob Ashman

  The next morning Moran ate breakfast as she got ready to leave. It was 7am and she had arranged to meet Lucas and Harper near the motel at seven thirty to run through last minute details. It was unusual for her to eat anything in the morning but given the potential for holy shit to be let loose today, breakfast was a sound idea.

  She put the gun into her backpack along with the box of shells, the walkie-talkie and the binoculars. She gave herself one last look in the mirror and puffed up her hair. It sank back immediately. She shrugged and opened the door.

  Mills was standing on her doorstep.

  ‘Jesus.’ Moran stepped back. ‘You scared me.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to.’

  She heard the words but his face said the opposite.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Moran eased the bag from her shoulder and pushed it out of sight with her foot.

  ‘This is not a social call,’ Mills said.

  ‘I thought you were going to write to me when you’d concluded your investigation. Did you send me something? Have I missed it?’

  ‘No, this is about a different matter, but it is connected.’

  Moran screwed her face up.

  ‘I want you to come to the station to answer a few questions.’

  Fuck, this is not good.

  ‘Answer a few questions about what?’

  ‘We can talk about that at the station.’

  ‘Can’t we do this another time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  ‘Have I read you your rights?’

  Moran shook her head and followed Mills down the path. She made for her car.

  ‘No, it would be better if you came with me.’

  She shrugged and climbed into the passenger seat.

  Mills pulled away and headed for the station.

  ‘What is this about?’ asked Moran.

  ‘I’ll tell you at the station.’ Mills stared straight ahead.

  Her outward demeanour was of someone mildly inconvenienced, in her head she was screaming blue murder.

  They travelled the rest of the way in silence.

  Lucas and Harper nosed the car into a side street and pulled over. Neither of them was in the mood for chatting. The gravity of the situation was weighing heavily on them both. It was unlikely they would see any action but that sensible piece of deduction did not remove the chance that they might come face to face with a vicious serial killer this morning.

  The clock on the dashboard ticked past the half-hour mark.

  ‘She’s late,’ Harper said.

  ‘Give her a few minutes, she’s probably stuck in traffic.’

  ‘We weren’t stuck in traffic and we use the same route.’

  ‘Give her a few more minutes.’

  The silence returned. Harper toyed with his gun.

  The clock said 7.40am.

  ‘We need to make a move,’ said Harper. ‘She knows the drill, she can catch us up.’

  Harper climbed onto the roof and pressed himself against one of the metal cabinets covered with yellow lightning flashes warning of electricity. He figured Mechanic would position herself along the front wall where she had the best line of sight to the target. It would be directly in line with the door and Bonelli’s head. He found the ideal spot, the electrical cabinet was twenty feet away to the right. The switchgear inside hummed in the still morning air.

  Lucas was off to the left of the motel grounds watching the back. He could see the ladders leading up to the roof at either side of the building. He had the walkie-talkie in his hand.

  They waited.

  Where the hell is Moran? They both had the same thought.

  At the station Mills ushered Moran into an interview room.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said and left.

  Moran picked at her fingernails. She checked her watch every five minutes. She needed to get back home, grab her bag and get to the motel fast. What the hell was Mills playing at.

  Moran’s patience ran out and she had her hand on the door handle ready to leave when Mills returned carrying an envelope. She sat down again and he shut the door.

  ‘Will this take long?’ she asked.

  ‘That depends on what you have to say.’

  ‘Come on, Mills, spit it out.’

  ‘We located the Helix Holdings file held at the public records office in Tallahassee. We believe it had been deliberately misfiled. The file had been tampered with and documents removed – the forensic accountants are working on it now to piece together what’s missing.’

  ‘That’s all interesting stuff, Mills, but why have you brought me in here to tell me that. I’m no longer on the case so what’s it got to do with me?’

  Mills removed a photograph from an envelope and set it in front of her. The picture showed the back of a person waiting outside an elevator with a suitcase. They were wearing a knitted hat and a hideous canary yellow jacket. Moran gazed at the image and steeled every muscle in her body not to flinch.

  She looked at Mills.

  ‘So, what am I looking at?’

  ‘Well, if I’m right, it’s you.’

  ‘Ha, dressed in that get-up. I don’t think so.’

  She slouched back in her chair and pushed the photo back to Mills. Her head went into overdrive.

  Shit, this must be taken from the surveillance camera at the public records office. Mills can’t have a picture showing my face, or right now he would be ramming it down my throat.

  Mills returned the favour and pushed the photo back to her.

  ‘It’s your height, your build. I think you went to Tallahassee to cover your tracks.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s exactly what I did. I left here and went straight to the airport, jumped on a plane, flew two thousand miles and hid the file in a place where it was bound to be found. Yes, that’s a really smart move.’

  ‘I think that’s precisely what you did, and I will prove it. We are dusting the file for prints, and when we identify yours I will be in touch. Tampering with public records is a serious offence. The removal and destruction of public records is a serious offence. They carry with them a jail term of up to three years. Adding that to withholding critical information in a murder case makes it quite a rap sheet.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Mills nodded his head.

  Moran looked at the print. The white skin of her hand was clearly visible, poking out of the sleeve of the jacket. What Mills could not see was the gloves balled up and stuffed into the pocket.

  Dust away, she thought.

  Dust away.

  At the motel, time ticked by. Lucas was hopping from one foot to the other trying to control his nerves. Harper spent his time checking his weapon over and over again. He was afraid to walk about in case Mechanic saw him on her approach to the motel. He was calm and collected.

  His watch said 9.20.

  Moran was finally on the move. She raced home, picked up her bag and screeched her car up the road heading for the motel. Lucas and Harper must have put an amended plan in place. She had to be careful on her approach, the operation could be underway by the time she got there. She couldn’t screw it up.

  The motel came into view and she pulled over. She tracked the remaining one hundred yards on foot. Her walkie-talkie made a squelch sound.

  Harper had depressed the button sending a single squelch to the other unit. He was asking Lucas if he could see Mechanic. Lucas responded with two squelches – no. If Mechanic appeared, Lucas would give three squelches to signal she was on the ground.

  Harper checked his watch, it was 9.55. He craned his head around the cabinet. The coast was clear.

  He made his way to the front wall and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. He could see the metal partition. A few minutes later he saw the door open and a big man in a dark suit walked out. He crossed the triangle and heaved the metal wall to the side.

  A black SUV swung into the parking lot and headed over to the man waiting in the gap. The vehicl
e eased inside and the man opened the rear door. Harper recognised Bonelli immediately as he got out of the car.

  Harper counted in his head.

  One.

  The man acknowledged Bonelli with a nod of his head and closed the door.

  Two.

  The front doors opened and two men got out.

  Three.

  Bonelli walked along the side of the SUV.

  Four.

  The entourage marched to the apex of the triangle.

  Five.

  One man opened the service door and moved to the side.

  Six.

  Bonelli stepped through the gap and was gone.

  Today was not the day, Harper thought.

  He edged his way down the ladder and met up with Lucas. Moran was standing beside him.

  ‘Where the hell did you get to?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Harper shook his head and tutted loudly. They walked back to their cars.

  ‘Today was not the day,’ Harper said, out loud this time.

  ‘Looks that way,’ replied Lucas.

  ‘When you realised Mechanic was a no-show did you take a look at Bonelli?’ Moran asked.

  ‘Yup, and at 10am sharp he pulls up in a big limo, a load of heavies get out and escort him through the side door. If I’d had a long gun, his brains would be all over the whitewash.’

  ‘What’s our next move?’ asked Moran.

  Lucas jumped into his rental car.

  ‘You two can stay here and keep a low profile while I go back to San Diego and piss someone off by parking outside his house.’

  38

  Bonelli was sitting in the private lounge on the twenty-first floor of the Mint. It looked like an English old boys’ club with high back wing chairs, gaudy wallpaper and walnut tables. Crystal chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling and purple velvet drapes were looped back either side of the windows.

  Bonelli was holding court. His men were clustered around him in a semi-circle, each one swallowed up by their easy chair, each one with a glass beside them. A waiter dressed in black tie was in attendance, bringing more drinks on a silver tray.

  It was easy to see who was in charge. Bonelli was seated in the biggest chair, with the most flared wings and the highest back. He looked like a Disney villain.

  Since Mechanic had killed his brother, Alfonso Bonelli had done well with the business. The word on the street said he was too much of a knucklehead to make it work. His brother had been the smooth, suave, sophisticated one, with the gravitas of a corporate executive. Alfonso was the enforcer.

  Rival gangs had tried to move in on his turf following his brother’s death. His murder was seen as a sign of weakness and they smelled blood. Unfortunately, the blood they smelled was their own and Alfonso ruthlessly crushed them. Once that was done, life returned to business as usual – supplying class A drugs, prostitution and a new line in extortion. Alfonso Bonelli had proved his critics wrong, and there were now fewer of them to doubt him.

  He liked the routine of getting his men together once a week. It was a good discipline he had read about in a self-help book about running a successful company. It gave him the opportunity to bond with his team and hold them accountable for their performance, or that’s what the book said. For Bonelli it was an opportunity to look into the whites of their eyes to tell if they were lying.

  The meeting was drawing to a close and each person had reported on their activities for the week. Most importantly they had reported on how much money they had made.

  ‘Has anyone got anything else they want to raise?’ Bonelli said.

  ‘Yes, Boss, I got something.’

  Bonelli nodded at the forty-year-old man, with a shaved head, bursting out of his suit.

  ‘Do you recall a while back we were looking for two men, one white and one black. They were connected with Harry Silverton. We circulated mug shots of them both, remember?’

  Bonelli leaned forward from his chair.

  ‘Turns out, one of my guys thinks he saw them yesterday.’

  Lucas drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he watched the front of the two-up two-down town house in the trendy Ocean Bay area. It was 7am.

  Jameson clocked him as he closed his front door and got into his car. Lucas followed him. They pulled onto the highway, bound for the dirt road leading to the piece of waste ground under the railway bridge.

  The surface of the road seemed to have deteriorated since Lucas last drove it. The suspension complained every time the wheels sank into a pothole. This was killing his car, or, more precisely, the rental company’s car.

  They swung around on the waste ground and Jameson jumped out. Lucas did the same.

  ‘I told you not to do that,’ he barked.

  ‘Save it,’ Lucas said. ‘My client was delighted by the progress and ecstatic with the details you provided.’

  ‘That’s good. I am flexible towards my client’s needs.’

  ‘Yes, you are, and it is appreciated, I can assure you.’

  ‘I aim to please.’

  ‘Do you have an update?’

  ‘I do. I have a finalised date. Tell your guy that the job will go down next Friday.’

  ‘How will I know when it’s done?’

  ‘You strike me as a well-informed man. I don’t think it will be necessary for me to tell you.’

  ‘That’s a good point, we will probably know before Bonelli.’

  Jameson cracked a smile.

  ‘How do you want the balance of the money paid?’

  ‘Cabrillo Bridge. Be there at 3pm on Friday. That will give me time to get confirmation.’

  ‘That’s good. By then I will also have confirmation. We can compare notes.’

  There was nothing more to be said.

  Lucas bounced down the road wrecking the shock absorbers on the rental car, not looking forward to the long drive back to Vegas.

  Bonelli catapulted out of his chair. The forty-year-old guy bulging out of his suit thought he was a dead man.

  ‘When? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘But I’m telling you now, Boss.’

  ‘When did he see them?’

  ‘It was yesterday. A woman was nosing around the back of the Mint and said something about looking for her purse. One of our men talked to her, she got confused and left.’

  ‘And? Where do the two guys come into it?’

  ‘She walked off the parking lot and met up with them. The two men from the mug shots. It was them.’

  ‘Is he certain?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a reliable guy. If he says it was them, I’d put money on it.’

  Everyone else was welded to their seats.

  ‘Why the fucking hell didn’t you think to bring this to me yesterday?’ Bonelli flung his arms in the air and slapped them onto the arms of the chair.

  ‘I knew we were getting together today, so I assumed it would be okay to tell you now.’

  ‘You assumed, you assumed?’ Bonelli was turning red.

  ‘Sorry, Boss. I thought it would be okay.’

  Bonelli jumped up and marched around the room.

  ‘Let me get this straight. Yesterday one of your men spots the white guy who killed two of our men. You know they are linked to the death of my brother, right? And you think it’s okay to tell me about it today?’ His voice rattled the chandeliers.

  ‘Sorry, Boss.’

  ‘Sorry!’ Bonelli drew his gun and pointed it at the man quivering in his chair. He walked up to him and drove the muzzle into his forehead.

  ‘Sorry?’ Bonelli said, his hand shaking.

  The man cowered with his head between his knees.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry …’ His snivelling voice filled the room.

  Bonelli jammed the gun into the back of his head.

  The man pissed himself.

  39

  Harper wasn’t too sure what Lucas meant when he told him to keep a low profile while he was in San D
iego. He interpreted it to mean ‘stay in your hotel and don’t be an idiot’.

  He had been holed up for most of the day and so far so good. But now Harper was restless and thirsty, with almost twenty thousand dollars in a sports bag stuffed in a closet. It was not the ideal set of circumstances to ensure a low profile.

  He hailed a cab, jumped in the back and leaned forward over the front seat.

  ‘Fremont Street, please.’

  Harper sat back with a token of Fabiano Bassano’s appreciation tucked away in his wallet.

  The driver dropped him off outside the Horseshoe, and Harper made a beeline for the bar. The first ice-cold beer didn’t touch the sides as he chugged it down. Before the barman had a chance to return with his change he needed another. Keeping a low profile was thirsty business.

  The place was a cacophony of noise with slot machines chiming out honky-tonk tunes and spewing coins into metal trays, while guys in denim shirts huddled around the gaming tables hollering and whooping. It was built-in entertainment.

  Harper was especially entertained by the casino waitresses in their low-cut mini-dresses with a split up one thigh. They served the punters gambling away their hard-earned cash. It almost made Harper wish he were a gambler, but gambling wasn’t one of his numerous vices. However, ogling the women as they weaved their way through the throng, balancing their trays high in the air, definitely was.

  After three more rapid beers the effect of the mini-dresses and low-cut tops was getting to him. He left the Horseshoe and turned right. He could see the neon signs of the Golden Goose and Glitter Gulch up ahead.

  There was a soft tap on the front door. Moran opened it to find Mills standing on the step.

  ‘Have you come to arrest me this time?’

  ‘No, but I do have more questions.’

  ‘Look, Mills, it’s late. I don’t have the patience to come down to the station to look at pictures of random strangers in yellow jackets. Can’t this wait till tomorrow?’

  ‘We don’t have to do this at the station. It won’t take long.’