by Leigh Barker
“Don’t be stupid, Grady,” O’Brian said, his feelings for the man clear from his tone.
“Sorry,” Grady said, flushing a little. “Wasn’t thinking.”
“No friggin’ change there, then,” O’Brian said.
“That’s enough!” Patrick snapped. “Can’t you see my daughter, you retard?”
“Shit! Christ!” O’Brian said, digging a hole faster than a steam shovel. “Sorry, Mr O’Conner, I just—”
“Go and watch the fish, Debs,” Patrick said, glaring at O’Brian.
“Hey,” Grady said, “did you hear Junior Brown’s warehouse got blowed up last night?”
Patrick looked at him for a moment as he processed the information and then shrugged. “What do I care? You got our merchandise, right?” The question was emphasised by a questioning squint.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Grady said. “And sent it on its way.” He nodded to confirm the truth of what he was saying. “White van, so it could have been anything.” He frowned. “Guy was weird, though.”
Patrick took the glass of champagne from the waiter in the penguin suit without even noticing him. “Weird how?”
“Dunno really,” Grady said, struggling with the effort of thinking. “Grunted a lot. Smelled like shit—” He looked quickly at Debbie, but she was tracking one of the brightly coloured fish with her finger on the glass. Patrick’s expression was promising pain, so he went on quickly. “Carried one of those big boxes under each arm. Built like a brick sh—” He got the look again. “Outhouse, and stunk of aftershave. And he was one of those Eastern Europeans, I think.” He shuddered. “Give me the creeps.”
“What the hell you talking about, Grady?” O’Brian said. “How can an Eastern European give you the creeps? It’s not like they’re Chinese or nothin’.”
Grady shrugged. “Dunno, it’s the way they look at you.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Patrick said, ending the idiocy. “So the packages have been delivered to the buyer?”
Grady nodded. “Yeah, like I said—”
“Eastern European,” Patrick said with a sigh. “Good riddance, that stuff was dynamite with a sweat on.” He downed the champagne in one gulp and pulled a face. “Get me a proper drink,” he said to O’Brian.
O’Brian took the glass from his boss as he passed, handed it to the waiter. He stopped at the dresser and selected a whiskey from the array of bottles.
While O’Brian poured two large drinks, one of the waiters began packing away the champagne bottles and used glasses, taking care not to make any noise, both to avoid disturbing his clients, and so they wouldn’t look and see him lifting his MP-5SD mini sub-machine gun from the cabinet under the serving trolley. This was Detroit’s favourite weapon and formed a non-negotiable part of any contract outside the US. Heckler and Koch integration of the MP5’s sound suppressor and the elimination of the butt stock kept the sub-machine gun’s length to twenty-two inches and made it the ideal tool for a quiet kill. As usual, Detroit used the smaller fifteen-round magazine because if that didn’t get the job done, a hundred-round drum wouldn’t help — he’d be dead.
He flicked the trigger group off safe. O’Brian was behind him, so he killed him first, to get him out of the way. Set to a three-round burst, the nine-mil rounds slammed into O’Brian with barely more noise than a loud cough, hurling him into the dresser and scattering and smashing the bottles as his arms flailed in his death-dance. He coughed a plume of blood and slumped over the dresser as though his strings had been cut. Almost casually, Detroit turned and put three into Grady, shattering the champagne glass frozen halfway to his wide-open mouth. To his right, the other waiter recovered his wits and ran for the door. Detroit swung the gun round, fired once, and looked back at the room, without even waiting for the man to fall, but the way the man’s legs stopped working in mid-stride was a pretty good indication of the effectiveness of the shot.
Patrick had been around assassinations most of his adult life and was way past being stunned by one in progress. As Detroit swung the silenced sub-machine gun in his direction, he bolted, dived through an open door, hit the floor, and slammed the door shut with his foot.
Detroit sighed heavily and walked across the apartment, stepping over the bloody remains of Grady as he went. He tapped the door with the gun’s endplate and shook his head at the metallic sound. Panic room. Trust the man to have one of those. Okay, he’d just wait. He turned and crossed to the sofa, put the machine gun across his lap and sat back to wait it out. O’Conner was included in the contract, so he would wait patiently. There’s no such thing as an impatient cleaner, not a live one, anyway.
A movement caught his eye, and he fired a burst left-handed on reflex. The aquariums fitted into the wall blew apart in a cascade of water and flapping fish. He stood up in a single move, caught the gun’s barrel with his right hand, and held it steadily, pointing at the shattered glass. Another movement and he fired again, but he hadn’t shot many kids, and his aim was high.
Debbie ran through the open door into the corridor without realising the sounds she could hear above her head were bullets meant for her, but she did know that there was a bad man in the room, and he was trying to hurt her, so she ran, and she was quick for a sickly looking kid. By the time Detroit reached the door, she was already at the end of the twenty-foot corridor and skidding to turn left in front of the city-view window. A long burst from the sub-machine gun blew the window out, and she threw her hands over her head as glass showered her. The movement did two things; it threw her out of the window, and it saved her life as Detroit emptied the magazine into the space she’d been using a moment before.
He ran down the corridor, replacing the mag as he went, put the gun through the window, and leaned out, but the kid was gone. He looked right and left and swore. The brat had fallen down the sloping tiles and off the roof, so now the cops would be all over the scene. He swore again, kids always screwed things up. He would have to make a second hit, an event so rare, he could only just recall the last time he’d had to do it. That time was because of some stupid kid, running across the front of the building like he was Spiderman or something. What was that all about? He’d run across the windowsill, right into the bullet that had been the endgame of weeks of work to get just the right building with a vacant room and a view of the courthouse. Okay, he’d tidied it up later, but it had been a messy, last-minute thing with explosives, and he hated explosives, with all that noise and shit.
He was still swearing quietly as he stepped into the elevator and stripped off the monkey suit, rolled it up, and stuffed it up through the roof access hatch along with the MP5, and that was a pity.
Harry and Bob the Burglar sat in Bob’s decommissioned taxi and craned their necks to see the upper windows of the six-storey building that housed Patrick’s apartment.
“Which one is it?” Bob asked, rubbing his neck.
Harry glanced at him for a moment. “The one with the Bad Man Lives Here sticker on the window.”
Bob leaned forward and squinted up through the reflected streetlights at the top-floor windows, but couldn’t see the sticker. Harry must be in a better position. “Shall I go and poke around?”
Harry looked at him quickly. “Poke around?”
“Yeah, y’know?”
Harry didn’t know, but guessed ignorance was bliss in this case. “Come on, then,” he said, opening the car door and flinching at the grinding hinges. “Bloody hell! What are you driving here?”
Bob grinned. “Cool, eh?” He opened his door, accompanied by the same sound effects. “I can drive down bus and taxi lanes, park wherever I like, and…” he winked, “nobody notices a taxi.”
Harry warmed to the heap of rusting scrap and closed the door gently to avoid knocking any bits off it. He looked both ways down the quiet Mayfair street and walked towards the entrance to Patrick’s building, staying close to the wall and in the shadows.
Bob stood in the road under the streetlight and watched him
with his head tilted and a quizzical look on his face. “Harry,” he said quietly. “Harry!” he repeated loudly, when he got no response.
Harry glared at him for breaking silence during a recon mission. “Shhh! For chrissakes, you’ll wake up the whole street.”
Bob strolled over to him. “The whole street is awake.” He glanced at his watch. “It being eight o’clock and dinner time.” He waited a moment. “And this being central London, not Afghanistan.”
Ah, good point.
Harry came out of the shadows, avoided looking at Bob, and walked quickly to the wide, arched entrance. He expected to see a concierge, but the foyer was deserted. Odd, because any old street-bum could wander in and have the pictures and junk away. Maybe there’s a camera—
“Can I help you… sir?” said a voice right behind him.
He jumped with shock and spun round to see a little old chap in a blue ‘don’t mess with me’ uniform and a flat cap, standing a foot away, with Bob behind him grinning like a schoolboy in the girls’ showers.
“Jesus!” Harry said and backed off another step.
“No, sir, I am the concierge,” the old man said, without a flicker of expression.
Harry frowned. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what… sir?”
“Injun up on me like that?”
“I merely walked, sir, as one does.”
“Well, don’t do it,” Harry said petulantly, “it’s unnerving.”
“Very well, sir,” the concierge said. “I shall endeavour to make more noise in future, if it helps.”
“Okay then,” Harry said, satisfied that he’d won that exchange, and diverted attention from the fact that he, a highly trained sneaking-about specialist, had been out-sneaked by a creaky old guy.
The creaky old guy coughed. “Now… sir,” he said, looking Harry over slowly and apparently not liking what he saw. “What can we do for you?”
Harry looked around in case the ‘we’ meant there was another one of these ninja doormen sneaking up on him. Satisfied that he was safe from sudden appearances of gnome people, he tried a smile. That didn’t work; it was just scary. “We are here to see Patrick O’Conner,” he said at last, having finished being a dickhead.
The old guy looked him up and down again for several awkward seconds. “I shall see if Mr O’Conner will see you.” He walked to the highly polished mahogany reception desk in the corner of the foyer, stopped and looked over his shoulder as he heard Harry move. “Please wait… sir.”
Harry waited, while Bob chuckled, and a moment later the concierge put down the phone. “It appears that Mr O’Conner is not at home. Good evening, sir.”
That was like ‘push off’, right?
Harry felt like he’d been slapped with a rubber chicken — in church. “Try again, will you?” The word was coming, but sticking in his throat. “Please.” There, not so hard.
The concierge blinked slowly to signal that he was thinking. “No, sir, I believe I have tried.”
Not very helpful, but wearing a peaked cap causes that.
Bob took Harry’s arm. “We’ll come back tomorrow, okay?” He turned to the concierge and smiled. “Thanks for trying,” he said, with a supporting nod. “And for scaring the life outa my friend,” he added under his breath.
“Up yours,” Harry said sulkily and followed him out into the cold night. “What now?” he asked as they went down the three wide steps back into the street.
“Give him a minute,” Bob said, leading him off to one side of the entrance.
Harry frowned. “What for?” He looked over his shoulder quickly, just in case the old guy appeared again. “He’s a ninja, you know that?”
Bob chuckled and glanced at his watch. “Almost eight.”
“So what? Does he turn into a pumpkin at eight?” Harry said sulkily. He didn’t like being made to look a dick by some old guy, when that was usually reserved for the women he met.
“No,” Bob said, “but the racing results are on the radio at eight.” He saw Harry’s frown. “And he had a newspaper on his desk open to the racing section.” He smiled again, happy chap, Bob. “He’ll sneak off someplace to listen, in case the rich folks overhear him. And that just wouldn’t do.”
Harry was seriously impressed. “You’re in the wrong business, you know?” He slapped Bob on the shoulder in admiration. “Recon scout, that’d be you.”
Bob smiled. “No difference really between reconnoitring an enemy’s position and scoping a gig.” He leaned round the door pillar and looked inside the foyer. “Okay, we can go now.”
Harry followed him into the foyer and across to the lift, keeping a lookout on all sides for another sudden appearance, but the lift doors closed without the geriatric ninja returning. “Okay,” he said, regaining his composure. “O’Conner’s place is on the top floor. Floor five.”
Bob pointed to the floor indicators with number five lit. A few seconds later they stepped out into the small corridor that led to the two top-floor apartments. Harry pointed at the end one before Bob could beat him to it. He put his ear to the door, but it was silent, both because there was no movement inside and because it was soundproofed.
“Okay, do your stuff,” he said, stepping aside so Bob could burgle the door.
Bob turned the handle, and the door swung open. He shrugged at Harry’s expression and entered Patrick’s sumptuous living room — except the luxury was somewhat marred by the copious amounts of blood splattered over just about everything. Bob stepped back out of the doorway as Harry entered. Time for the real difference between a marine and a burglar to come to the fore.
Harry stepped off to the side away from the door and wished he had his Sig, but the police frown on people walking about with handguns stuffed in their belts. He checked the room quickly and then relaxed. Whoever had killed the two men was long gone, unless he’d found a way of hiding in plain sight. He could’ve been in one of the other rooms, but the doors were closed, which would have been highly unlikely if a killer was wandering around the apartment. He signalled to Bob to come in.
Bob entered the room and blew his breath out in a low whistle, crossed to the panic room, pushed open the door, and looked back. “No bodies in here.” He looked behind the door. “Do you think…?”
Harry nodded. “I’d say Patrick O’Conner locked himself in there while somebody killed his employees.”
“Ideal employer,” Bob said, crossing the room and moving the painting above the fireplace. “Welfare of his employees at the top of his list.” He let the painting swing back. “Unless it inconveniences him in the least.”
Harry watched Bob scan the room carefully before walking to the dresser with O’Brian’s body slumped over it. “Okay,” he said quietly, “give me a hand.”
They lifted O’Brian’s body off the dresser and lowered it to the floor with more care than a dead body really required. Bob opened the glass doors to the top bookcase and tapped the leather-bound books until the sound changed from bookish to hollow wood. He turned to Harry and smiled, despite standing astride O’Brian’s bloody body, but he was dead so wouldn’t mind. He felt across the top of the books until there was a click and the dummy books swung open to reveal a white wall safe with an oversized combination lock.
Harry sucked air in between his teeth and scratched his cheek. “Bugger, that looks like a real bitch.”
Bob nodded. “It’ll take a while,” he said and started looking around again.
“Lost something?” Harry asked, also looking around, even though he didn’t know what for.
“The combination,” Bob said absently.
“Yeah, right. Maybe it’s scratched on the woodwork,” Harry said sarcastically.
“You’d be surprised. These locks can have a million or more combinations. People like O’Conner get a bit paranoid, so keep changing it, until they can’t remember the latest one, so they leave themselves a clue.”
“Kinda defeats the purpose of changing it, doesn’t it
?”
Bob shrugged absently and pointed at the books on the bottom shelf. “Ah!”
Harry looked at the leather-bound HG Wells’ novels. So what? Bob saw his confusion and tapped each of the books in turn. Ah, the volumes were numbered, and more importantly, the numbering was out of sequence. That couldn’t be it; it couldn’t be that daft.
Bob turned the combination, leaned back to check the novels, spun the lock the other way, and after a few seconds, stepped back and waved Harry forward like a magician’s assistant, but without the fanfare — or the sexy gear. Harry looked at him for a second, still doubtful. He pulled the safe door and was stunned when it swung open.
“Bob the Burglar, take a bow,” Harry said, taking a sheaf of papers out of the safe.
“No, thanks,” Bob said, reaching in and taking out a wad of cash that would have choked a horse. “I’ll take this instead.”
Harry nodded his approval, looked back in the safe in case they’d missed anything, and reached in to take out a revolver. He turned it in his hand and felt its weight. “Smith and Wesson M&P 340 CT,” he said quietly. “Three fifty seven magnum. Nice piece.”
“Cool,” Bob said, pocketing the cash. “You keep it, and I’ll keep this.”
“You know in the movies, when the crooks are just about to leg it and they hear the police sirens?” Harry asked innocently.
“Yeah, bit clichéd if you ask me,” Bob said, frowning. “So what?”
Harry tilted his ear towards the window and raised a finger. “Welcome to Hollywood.”
“Hey, we should go.”
“No shit? Maybe watch the game on the television first?” Harry said, but he was talking to Bob’s back as he headed for the door.