Aftermath (15 page)

Ray stopped outside the wrought iron gates, lowered his window and stretched his arm out to press the button on an intercom that was bolted to the flat plane of a spiralled brass post.  The gates began to swing open before he depressed the button, and he knew that Gloria had been watching one of several monitor screens that were linked to security cameras at strategic locations on the property.

The driveway was long, curving between tall, dense evergreen shrubbery – that obscured a large, modern Colonial-style residence – before opening onto a courtyard that boasted a large fountain that would have not been out of place in an Italian piazza.

Ray parked in front of a four-car garage and walked back to the semi-circle of steps leading up to a massive, solid oak front door.  It was opened to disclose Gloria standing in a short, salmon-pink toweling robe that was loosely tied around her waist and showed off her cleavage and long, shapely legs.  Any concern that Ray had was totally smothered by his immediate lustful feelings.

“Your mouth’s hanging open, Ray,” Gloria said, reaching out to fondle the bulge at the crotch of his jeans.  “Shut it and come on in, it’s the maid’s day off, so we’ve got the house to ourselves.”

Gloria went through to the kitchen with Ray following on behind and enjoying the view of her ass wiggling as she walked.  She fixed herself a vodka tonic, and Ray took a can of chilled Coors from the fridge, ripped off the pull and poured the light beer into a tall glass.

“Do you know what’s happening, Ray?”  Gloria asked as they walked through an arch off the hall into an east-facing reception room.

“Most of it, I reckon,” Ray replied.

Gloria took a seat on a large oyster-colored, L-shaped sofa and patted the cushion next to her, inviting Ray to sit down.  He did.  She put her hand on his thigh and said, “Is there anything that you wouldn’t do for me, Ray?”

All but one of Ray’s muscles seemed to melt.  She was the only woman that had ever had such a powerful effect on him.  He shook his head.  He was putty in her hands, and they both knew it.

“Do you know Sal Mendez?” Gloria said.

“I know of him,” Ray replied.  “I’ve only seen him once.  He came to the yard to talk to Sammy.  But I know what he does.  Why?”

“Because the scumbag has threatened me.  He says if I don’t pay him a million dollars, then Jerry and I will be murdered.”

“But I thought he was working
for
Jerry.”

“He was, but Jerry told him to cancel the contract on the two women, and he refused, and then must have decided to try and cash in.  He can put Jerry in prison for life if he talks.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I’d discuss it with Jerry, and that we’d pay him off.  But I was lying. There’s no way that Jerry can come up with that much cash.”

“What does Jerry have to say about it?”

“I haven’t told him.  There’s no point.  I’ve decided that when this is sorted out I’m going to file for divorce.”

Ray saw a future that he wanted begin to take shape. “Where will that leave us?”  he said

“Together, Ray.  I love you, and I want to be with you.  We’ll be able to leave Charleston and start over.”

Ray said, “What is it that you want me to do?”

“Meet with Mendez and kill him.  It’s the only way we can be free of the problem.”

Ray felt instantly bathed in fear.  He knew that Mendez was a stone killer; a man that made his living by hurting and killing others.  Ray was no coward, could hold his own in a bar fight, and was no pushover.  He was six-one, worked out, and would stand up to anyone.  But he had never killed another person, or used a gun for anything other than hunting squirrels and wild turkeys.

“How would I manage to do that?” Ray asked, embarrassed to hear his voice crack as he spoke.

“I would arrange for you to meet him with the money.  All you’d have to do is shoot him on sight.  I have a gun.”

“He would expect trouble, he’s a pro.”

“Are you saying that you won’t do it?”

A voice in Ray’s head shouted ‘
Damn right I won’t fucking do it
’, but he opened his mouth and listened to himself say, “No, I’ll do it if it’s the only way.”

“Good, now let’s go to bed, baby,” Gloria said.  “And then you can drive me to the hospital to pick Jerry up.”

As Ray made love to the woman of his dreams, Gloria thought of how much she could screw Jerry for in court.  She had been truthful about seeking a divorce, but would also dump Ray when he ceased to be of any use to her.  The future looked rosy.  She decided to start a new life in Florida, maybe in West Palm Beach, and find some filthy rich old guy who could afford to provide her with the lifestyle she believed she deserved.

As Gloria and Ray showered together in Jerry’s black-tiled bathroom, Sal slowly eased himself out of the Dodge and limped along a trail through the trees to the Golden Valley Trailer Park.  He paused to fit the silencer on his pistol and tuck the weapon into his waistband.

Logan
laid out the remaining two cell phones he had confiscated on the table.  He had written down all the numbers that he may need from their contact lists.  It was time to get rid of them.  He removed the SIM cards and destroyed them with a steak hammer he found in a drawer in the kitchen.  He took the ruined cards and the phones outside to the back of the trailer, tossed the cards into the undergrowth and placed the phones in a hollow and covered it with a large moss-covered rock.

He reviewed the situation.  They had two handguns, three untraceable phones, and were being hunted by a wounded killer who’d become fixated and intended to kill them.  He could live with that.  One guy was no big deal.  And with any luck Mendez would be bought off by the Brandons’, but he wouldn’t count on it.

Before they left, after Rita and Sharon had hugged Tom and said their goodbyes, Logan spoke to the old man

“I don’t think that Mendez will come back here,” he said.  “But if he does, just tell him that we turned up again and stayed the night, then left.  We didn’t say where we were headed.”

“I
don’t
know where you’re going, and don’t want to,” Tom said.  “I’ll keep my twelve-gauge close by, and if he shows up you can be sure I’ll act dumb.  If I think he’s bringing trouble to my door I’ll just blow his damn head off.”

“Be careful,” Logan said.  “The guy kills for a living.”

“I hear you, Logan, loud and clear.”

They shook hands, and a minute later Logan, Rita and Sharon were on the highway, heading in the direction of Morgantown with the plates off an old Buick that had been rusting up behind Tom’s trailer for over a decade on the Discovery.

Logan knew that Morgantown wasn’t a big city, but it was big enough to hole up in while he decided how to bring an end to the danger that he knew they were still in.

Sal drew his SIG and spun round at the sound of twigs snapping behind him.  The dog leaped up in greeting, front paws extended and only eighteen inches from him.  He shot it in the chest more as a reaction than by intent.  The animal dropped down and tried to crawl away from him.  It was whimpering, and blood foamed from its open jaws.  Sal finished it off with another slug.  Looked up and saw a couple standing less than thirty feet from him, temporarily rigid in shock at having just witnessed their beloved Labrador gunned down.

Sal had no alternative but to kill them.  He shot the man in the face, twice, and the woman just collapsed in a dead faint.  He walked over and put a bullet in the back of her head.

For the first time in his life, Sal let superstition enter his psyche.  This job had been nothing but trouble since he’d capped the two girls in D.C.  Maybe it just wasn’t worth the effort.  He had nothing to prove.  The marks were strangers to him, just doing whatever they could to stay alive.  A rational part of his mind told him to walk away, take the money from Brandon and move on.  Maybe go to San Francisco, which was his favourite city, and open a small bar and take it easy.

He just stood over the corpse of the dead woman and let options percolate and settle out.  Shook his head.  Knew that he couldn’t let it go.  If he let the women and Logan live it would haunt him for the rest of his days.  He needed closure.  They had outsmarted him, hurt him, and thought that they were safe.  That was not acceptable.  He would find them, kill them, and then go back to Charleston to take Jerry Brandon’s money from him.

A minute later he was at the door of Tom Ellerson’s trailer.

“Hi there,” Tom said, opening the door and smiling down at Sal.  “I didn’t expect to see you back again.  You decided to purchase one of my trailers and settle in these parts?”

“No, old timer, I’m a city boy at heart.”

“So what can I do for you?”

“You can tell me where my friends are.  Are they still here?”

Tom saw a cold look like a winter cloud form in the man’s eyes.  Knew that he was face to face with someone who had no respect for life.

“If you mean the big guy and the two women, then no,” Tom said.  “They turned up yesterday, late afternoon, and lit out this morning.”

“Did they say where they were headed?” Sal asked.

“No, and I didn’t enquire.  People come and go, and I don’t give a rat’s ass where they’re from or where they’re going.”

Sal believed the old man.  He seemed straight, with no tension in his voice or body language.  Liars always unconsciously let their eyes slide away, or fidgeted as they delivered an untruthful answer.  It made no difference.  He had no choice but to kill him, because of the dead dog and its owners in the woods.

As Sal drew his SIG, Tom leaned to the left and snatched up his shotgun, to bring it up and round to aim at the man that he knew was about to kill him.  He was a thousandth of a second from pulling the trigger when a bullet hit him in the mouth and drove him back into the trailer, where he fell on to his back before his finger jerked and discharged a load of buckshot into the ceiling above him.

Sal waited till the cloud of plaster and debris from the hole in the ceiling had settled, then stepped up and put another slug into Tom’s left temple.  He took no pleasure from the act.  His thigh hurt, his side was sore, and he felt like shit.  He was leaving a trail of collateral damage in his wake, and would rather not have had to.  Maybe he really should just go back down to Charleston, take the pay-off from Gloria Brandon and walk away.

Sal limped back to the Dodge and sat for five minutes to get his breath back.  He swallowed another four pain killers and smoked a cigarette as he reviewed the situation.  He had absolutely no idea where Logan and the women were headed.  He needed to be rational.  They were strangers to him.  Unimportant.  He was acting like an idiot by attempting to run them down.  He flicked the cigarette butt out of the window, and as he was about to drive off his phone rang.  It was Ritchie.

“The signal is moving west,” Ritchie said to him.

“Thanks, Ritchie,” Sal said.  “But it isn’t with who I’m looking for now.”

He ended the call.  It was time to ignore foolish pride and redirect his way of thinking.  A switch clicked off in his mind.  What had gone down since the debacle in D.C. up to this moment in time was history.

Forty-five minutes later Sal was on the ramp up onto the I-79, heading south toward Charleston with the intention of collecting enough cash to start over.  Although he enjoyed killing, he was not addicted to it.  His foremost reason for doing it had always been the monitory reward.  It was time to quit while he was ahead of the game.  The injuries he had sustained had acted as a wake-up call.

He was cruising, keeping to the speed limit and listening to an old Neil Diamond song on the car radio when he got the call from Gloria Brandon.

He turned down the volume on the radio and accepted the call.

“You got good news for me, Mrs. B?”  Sal asked.

“I’ve got the best offer that Jerry can come up with.”

“Which is?”

“Half a million in cash.”

Sal wasn’t that surprised.  Knew that guys like Brandon could be worth millions on paper, but hadn’t got it laying in a bank account.  The money was usually working for them, reinvested, or tied up in new ventures.  He said nothing for thirty seconds.  Neither did Gloria.

“OK,” Sal said. “But I want you to know that I expect a double-cross.  I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning and tell you where and when.”

Gloria sighed with relief.

“Did he go for it?”  Ray asked as he pulled into the five-story public car lot at the hospital.

“Yes,” Gloria said.  “He’s going to call back tomorrow and tell me where to make the drop.”

They met Jerry at the main doors.  His right arm was heavily plastered and up across his chest in a sling, and the sun glinted off the ends of the metal splints that were taped to his fingers.  To Gloria he seemed to have aged ten years overnight.  He looked just what he was, a middle-aged, worried little man.

“Let’s get you home,” Gloria said, leaning in from Jerry’s left to give him a light kiss on the cheek.  “You need a large Scotch and a lot of rest, baby.”

Ray stayed well back, out of hearing behind Gloria and Jerry as they walked back to the parking garage.  He caught up with them outside the elevator and they rode it up to the third floor.

Jerry said nothing in front of Ray.  Just let his employee help him into the rear of the BMW.  Gloria got in beside him, and Ray drove back down to the street exit and headed out of town.

After Ray had dropped them off at the house and left, Gloria fixed Jerry a large Scotch rocks and fussed around him, wishing that the man called Logan had broken his neck instead of his arm and fingers.

“I’m in deep shit,” Jerry said after almost draining the crystal glass with one long gulp.  “The police know everything, but have no proof as yet.  And that maniac Logan will come back to Charleston if I can’t get Mendez to back off.”

“I’ve taken care of it,” Gloria said.  “Mendez has seen the light.  I made a deal with him.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Half a million and he’ll forget that Logan and the women exist.  He’s going to contact me tomorrow to arrange where to collect it.”

Jerry felt his blood pressure rise to a dangerous level inside of three seconds.  His face seemed to swell as it turned to a dark red.  “I can’t lay my hands on that much money by tomorrow,” he shouted.  “Are you fuckin’ mad?”

“Far from it,” Gloria said.  “Mendez is always going to be a threat to us while he’s alive.  “You have enough cash to make up a package that he’ll never get chance to check out.  Ray will make the drop, and when Mendez starts counting the money, Ray will shoot him.”

Jerry held out his glass.  Gloria took it and went over to the corner bar to get him a refill.

“You think that Ray is up to it?”  Jerry said.

“He seems to have what it takes,” Gloria replied.  “I told him that you would put him in charge of the limo service, now that Sammy is out of the way.  And that he could expect a nice bonus and a rise in pay for helping us out.”

Jerry took the freshly-filled glass from her and considered what she had proposed.  He wasn’t happy, but thought it might work.  He couldn’t think of a better way to deal with the situation.  The only problem would be if Logan had been lying to him about a record of his tax evasion.  It would be better if they were all fuckin’ dead, but beggars’ couldn’t be choosers.  He would have to deal with what he could and just hope for the best.  Maybe contact Logan again and let him know that if Rita or Sharon ever went to the authorities with anything, then even if he went to prison he would reach out and arrange for them to be whacked.

Ray got back to the yard and inspected the pistol that Gloria had given him to do the job with.
 It was a S&W Centennial Airweight; a lightweight .38 Special with a two-inch barrel.  This was a revolver with snag-free configuration, perfect for a ladies pocket or purse, to be used up close as the short barrel wasn’t much use for across the street shootouts.  With a shrouded hammer, this was a gun that Ray could fire through a coat pocket without a hammer or a slide fouling in fabric and stopping the stream of fire.  Gloria had also given him a box of shells.  He checked the load and then wrapped the pistol and ammo in a dry, clean cloth and stashed the bundle in a car tyre, two down in one of the dozen stacks at the back of the large workshop.

The thought of having to shoot Mendez dead was making him feel physically sick, but the prize of having Gloria was incentive enough to ensure that he would do it.