“I-I really have to get back to work,” she said after a short pause. “Can we talk on my next break?”
The stranger drained his mug. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I really have to get going. I’ve got to get up early for work in the morning. But I’m starting to develop a real affection for this place. I’ll be back tomorrow night if you’re going to be here.”
“I’ll be here,” she answered. “And maybe tomorrow you can ask Brandy to add a little vodka to the orange juice.”
The stranger laughed and toasted her with his now-empty mug. “A screwdriver it is, then. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Victoria. It was wonderful meeting you.”
He stood and took her hand one more time, gave it a reassuring light squeeze, and then threw a twenty down on the table and turned toward the door. Victoria watched him go, not wanting him to leave, wondering whether she would still be alive by tomorrow night.
14
Jack hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. After leaving Tequila Mockingbird, he drove straight back to the Tumbling Dice, where he planned to spend a couple of hours reviewing his notes on Blake Arthur Standiford III.
Instead he spent fifteen minutes yawning and stretching at the motel room’s rickety writing desk before finally admitting defeat and falling into bed. You’re definitely getting too old for this line of work, he thought.
There was a time, and not that long ago, when he could have flown across the country, worked all night, and then stayed up the entire next day, with little or no effect on his reflexes or deductive reasoning. Both of these were critically important factors for a man in his line of work. Now he could barely keep his eyes open until midnight, and that was after sleeping most of the way across the country on two separate flights.
***
Jack awoke refreshed and ready for the day, his concerns about the aging process forgotten, or at least pushed to the side for now.
He stepped into the shower, thinking about last night’s odd encounter with Victoria, the beautiful redheaded piano player at Tequila Mockingbird. She was obviously in some kind of serious trouble. Her mannerisms and her nervous scrutiny of the club’s interior gave away that fact just as clearly as if she’d climbed to the roof of the club and shouted it to the world.
What kind of trouble the mild-mannered, skittish young woman could possibly be in was a mystery. She was friendly and well spoken, if extremely shy and clearly terrified. The obvious possibility of drugs didn’t seem to fit.
Boyfriend problems, most likely. She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring, but it seemed unlikely a woman as stunningly beautiful as Victoria would be alone.
Could that be it? An abusive boyfriend? She had no signs of injury, no obvious cuts or bruises, but Jack had dealt with enough abusers to know that the ones truly dedicated to their sick form of control tended to be extremely cautious, doing their damage in places on the body not easily observed.
Whatever the problem, it seemed clear to Jack that she was in over her head. She had tried to hide her nervousness and fear, but she had done a damned poor job of it and in the process had piqued Jack’s curiosity and aroused his natural inclination to protect, to defend, the helpless.
That desire to protect the weak was a strange character trait for a man who made a living by ending human life, but it had been a defining part of his personality for as long as he could remember. The people whose lives Jack Sheridan ended were never innocent, and they were certainly not helpless. In fact, the one thing they all seemed to share was their determination to take advantage of the innocent, to dominate the helpless.
He hated that.
Jack toweled off and began dressing, determined to put the issue of the redheaded piano player to the side, at least for now. As interesting as the issues of girl and her peculiar behavior were, it was important he focus on the task at hand. He was being paid handsomely to accomplish an assignment that had more than a little risk attached to it. If he lost focus, there was every possibility he would never leave Nevada alive.
Jack had already considered a couple of potential scenarios for dealing with a mob killer slated for elimination. As his mind insisted on wandering back to Victoria, the Tequila Mockingbird’s beautiful but terrified piano player, he began to wonder if he should consider other, less obvious scenarios. If he could convince her to open up and her problem was what he suspected it was—abusive boyfriend—perhaps there was a way to assist the young woman while at the same time executing his contract…
He shook his head, angry with himself. Forget about the redhead for now. Focus. You have no idea what she’s afraid of, anyway. Maybe she’s just a lunatic.
He didn’t think so, though. He didn’t think she was crazy at all. She struck him as a frightened young woman who felt she had nowhere to turn.
Jack glanced out the motel room’s window to see a beautiful, sunny Southwestern morning. It appeared the weather was going to cooperate. He picked up a light jacket and walked out the door. It was time to find a coffee shop and then get to work.
***
Blake Standiford sat in his kitchen, sipping his morning coffee and thinking about Kathy Saldana, and what she had forced him to do to her. It was an indication of how much she had meant to him, he felt, that he was wasting any time at all on her memory.
He was a good-looking guy, smooth, successful with the ladies, and when he left a woman behind, he typically didn’t spend one single second of his valuable time mooning over her loss. There were too many other chicks to be had. He went through them like most men went through deodorant.
Of course, he had never actually killed a former lover before, but he supposed it had only been a matter of time before that was bound to happen. Blake had always had a temper like a lit fuse, and after a while, killing people and getting away with it had become so commonplace that offing a bitch who had done him wrong was probably inevitable.
But to spend time actually reflecting on his relationship with Kathy surprised him. He had expected to worry a little about Fat Tony and his minions—not that he couldn’t handle those idiots—but this trip down memory lane regarding Shotgun Sammy’s dim-bulb wife was a bit of a shock.
Whatever.
Blake forced the stupid bitch out of his thoughts and turned them to where they belonged—the shitstorm that was going to rain down on him when her body was discovered. He had hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on her Luxor door when he left, but that was only going to delay the inevitable, and probably not for very much longer.
Blake knew he would be all over the surveillance videos. The Luxor was like any modern hotel, lousy with CCTV cameras, and somewhere there would be video evidence of the hallway in front of Kathy’s room. The video would be time-stamped and would show the two of them entering, and then him leaving alone less than an hour later.
He would be the prime suspect.
He would be the only suspect.
That went not just for law enforcement, but for Big Tony’s organization and Shotgun Sammy’s, too. Within hours of the murder being discovered, Blake would become very popular with all the wrong people.
It would probably happen sometime today. The odds of it taking longer than twenty-four hours for a corpse to be discovered in a place like the Luxor were extremely slim, DO NOT DISTURB sign or no DO NOT DISTURB sign.
Big Tony would then have some very serious questions for him. But he wasn’t worried about Big Tony. He had been handling guys like Tony Mercadante his whole life, using either charm or intimidation. Sometimes both. And he had every confidence he could continue to do so now, at least until he could steal as much cash as possible from the fat bastard and disappear forever.
The trick would be to stay out of custody, while simultaneously staying out of the clutches of Shotgun Sammy’s men, who were about to descend on Vegas like a fucking plague of locusts.
It wouldn’t be easy, but it was doable. And Blake knew he was just the guy who could pull it off.
***
After
draining his coffee, Jack set off in the direction of Blake Arthur Standiford’s home. The packet of information he had received from Mr. Stanton included a recent photo of Standiford as well as the man’s address. He lived in North Las Vegas, in his deceased mother’s house, and although traffic was heavy, Jack needed to begin getting a handle on the man.
Part of him wanted to simply walk into Standiford’s house, catch the man off guard, and put a couple of slugs in his head. It would be quick and easy, and he had no doubt he could pull it off.
The problem was that handling the assignment with such a brutal lack of subtlety would open up all sorts of complications: potential witnesses, potential collateral damage. Potential risk of the sort that was easily avoidable with a little patience and a professional approach.
Jack entered Standiford’s neighborhood and slowed his rental. Pulled to the curb and parked just around the corner from the target’s house, leaving himself a clear view of the front and side. The neighborhood was busy, blue collar, with lots of traffic at this time of the morning. All the activity served to make Jack as close to anonymous as he was likely to get in the light of day.
Standiford’s home was, like virtually every other house in the neighborhood, Spanish-style single-family stucco construction. The houses looked as though they had probably all been built at the same time, likely by the same builder, in a frenzy of activity during one of the many boom periods in Las Vegas’s history.
The target’s house was set back less than twenty feet from the road, bordered closely on both sides by neighbors’ homes. The properties were separated by a thin screen of full-grown shrubs in desperate need of trimming. A concrete driveway, stained from decades of dripping motor oil, led to a one-car attached garage. The front door featured a small covered archway meant to protect the occupant from the weather—or more likely the blazing sun—while searching for his keys.
It would also serve to shield Jack nicely from prying eyes should he choose to use that entrance to access Standiford’s home.
Jack settled back in his rental car, waiting for Standiford to put in an appearance. The desert air was warming rapidly, and he pictured Edie Tolliver scraping frost off her windshield in the chill of a New Hampshire early morning as she prepared to drive to the Three Squares Diner. New England born and raised, he had never lived anywhere else except for his years in the military. Didn’t think he wanted to, either, but he had to admit he could get used to this weather.
His reverie was cut short when Blake Standiford’s garage door rumbled slowly up on its tracks, revealing a silver Mercedes SL55 convertible roadster inside. The car backed hastily out of the garage, moving much faster than Jack would have done. Jack squinted in concentration. The driver was definitely Standiford.
The car slowed for just a moment as Standiford pressed a button on a remote clipped to his windshield visor. The big door began closing. Then the target stomped on the accelerator and the sports car backed into the street and roared away in the direction of downtown, buzzing right past Jack. The driver never saw him, though, as he stared steadfastly through the windshield, glancing neither left nor right.
Jack debated following, but decided to stick with his original plan, which was to familiarize himself with the inside of his target’s home. Most accidental deaths occur in the home, making it the obvious first choice. His contract failed to specify any method for its execution, and Jack’s default preference was for the appearance of an accident whenever possible.
His reasoning was simple: if the authorities didn’t consider the death to be a murder, they wouldn’t be looking for a murderer. And while Jack possessed the utmost confidence in his ability—honed over countless military and civilian missions—to escape detection, there was no reason in the world to tempt fate, either.
The information Jack had received from Mr. Stanton indicated that once Standiford left his home in the morning, there was virtually no chance he would return until much later in the day, probably not until evening. Still, Jack waited a few minutes. He wanted to give the early morning rush of commuters a chance to dissipate, as well as allow for the possibility of Standiford forgetting something and returning home.
After twenty minutes, both considerations seemed to have been satisfied. Automobile traffic had slowed to a trickle, and Standiford was still nowhere to be seen. If he had not turned around by now it seemed unlikely he would.
The neighborhood had by now cleared out to the point where it resembled a ghost town, which presented obvious problems. While a large crowd meant many potential witnesses, it also offered the advantage of anonymity. Citizens could be depended upon to mostly mind their own business when surrounded by throngs of people.
On the other hand, in a nearly empty space the stranger to the community tended to stand out; the man loitering with no apparent purpose became instantly memorable. But one thing everyone understood, no matter the surroundings or the situation, was the officious, self-important bureaucrat.
The representative of the state. The enforcer of regulations.
Inevitably, citizens seeing such a man—or woman—would be concerned about only one thing: that the visitor’s sudden appearance be meant for someone else. Anyone else. Once it was established that the stranger wasn’t here to see them, the bureaucrat tended to fade into anonymity again.
Jack had used that knowledge to his advantage many times, and he knew it would be just as effective today. He grabbed a briefcase and the picked up a clipboard off the front seat, to which he had attached a wad of official-looking but meaningless papers. He stepped out of the car and strode purposefully past two houses to Standiford’s driveway, where he turned and marched to the front door.
He resisted the urge to look around and see if he was being watched. He was a census taker, or a building inspector, or any one of a dozen paper-pushers who might have occasion to visit a homeowner on a typical weekday morning. As such, it made no difference whether anyone saw him. Believing it meant selling it, and he wanted to appear as though he had every reason in the world to be on Blake Standiford’s front doorstep.
Once he was safely under cover of the portico, the odds of being seen—and thus being interfered with—became practically nonexistent, and Jack relaxed. The front door was positioned in such a way that he was now invisible to neighbors, including residents of the house located almost directly across the street.
The only way anyone would see him at this point was if they happened to look at Standiford’s front door as they were driving or walking past. And even then their eyes would have to penetrate the relative gloom of the shade provided by the portico.
Jack would need only a few seconds to gain entrance. He removed his lock-picking tools from the briefcase and less than a minute later stepped through the door and into Blake Standiford’s front hallway. Set the briefcase on the floor and closed and relocked the door. Mr. Stanton’s packet of information had included the helpful tidbit that Standiford hadn’t ever bothered to install an alarm system, so there wasn’t even that relatively minor annoyance to deal with.
It never ceased to amaze Jack that the worst lawbreakers tended to be the most lax when it came to home security. Logic dictated it should be the other way around, but experience had taught him that the criminal element as a general rule tended to be overconfident and not particularly bright.
Dangerous and cunning, maybe. Deadly, occasionally. But usually not particularly bright.
He stood quietly just inside Standiford’s front door, getting his bearings while absorbing the cool stillness of the home. He knew his target lived alone and had no steady girlfriend—at least not since he had murdered her—so there was no reason to believe anyone would be here. Still, he tried never to take anything for granted. Surprises were an occupational hazard that could never be ruled out.
He breathed slowly, listening for anything that might indicate the presence of another human being. Running water. Voices. Footsteps.
He stood in his tracks for three s
olid minutes, getting the feel for what he now knew to be an empty house. Finally satisfied, Jack began moving quietly but methodically from room to room, committing the layout and furnishings to memory.
He took his time and did the job right. It was quite likely that the next time he entered it would be the middle of the night. He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, opening drawers and examining closets. Jack smiled at the number of weapons Standiford had squirrelled away. The guy was either one paranoid dude or one of the most dedicated handgun aficionados in Vegas.
He found a Walther P22 in the downstairs coat closet and slipped it into his pocket. The gun was a compact .22 caliber pistol weighing just fifteen ounces, and Jack had the vague suspicion it might come in handy at some point. Standiford would almost certainly never notice the gun had disappeared, nor would he likely think anything was amiss if he did. He would assume he had placed it somewhere else among the many backups stashed around the house.
Thirty minutes later Jack had completed his reconnaissance. He exited Standiford’s home as he had entered, through the front door. Using the rear entrance would only invite suspicion if anyone happened to see him. He pulled the door closed and then turned and double-checked to be certain it remained locked.
Then he picked up his briefcase and walked briskly away from the house, just an anonymous city official doing an anonymous job. He kept his clipboard with its official-looking but meaningless papers prominently displayed, but quickly came to the conclusion his little act was wasted. There was no one around to see him. The neighborhood was still deserted.
When he reached his rental, he unlocked the doors and tossed his clipboard onto the front passenger seat. He climbed in and started the car, and then drove off initially in the same direction Blake Standiford had gone almost an hour earlier.
But while Standiford had presumably continued into Las Vegas proper, Jack headed back toward the Tumbling Dice Motel. He had some preliminary planning to do.
The Organization Page 8