Aftermath (17 page)

“Yeah, gunshot wounds.  One in the left thigh and one in his right side.”

“You’re sure they were bullet wounds?”

“Positive, Detective,” Donny said.  “I saw enough in Nam.  And the guy said that he’d been shot by loan sharks in Charleston.”

Charlie took notes and thanked Donny for calling it in.  He knew that when Mendez had left the man’s cabin he had been driving a gray Ford Taurus and was wearing a plaid shirt and dark chinos.  He advised Donny that he would be required to give a full written statement.

Charlie had a bad feeling.  They still had no idea who the elderly couple who’d been found in the trunk of the gray Ford Taurus were. But he knew that the drying blood on its upholstery and steering wheel and door handles would be from Mendez, who was now driving an unknown vehicle, and could be anywhere in West Virginia, or even out of State.  It went without saying that the fugitive would alter his appearance, change clothes again, and almost certainly kill more people if they didn’t locate him.

Ray
arrived at the house a half hour before he was due to head into the city.  Jerry told him about Logan; described him and said that he would be back-up, travelling separately to wherever Mendez told Ray to take the money.

“So where the fuck is he?”  Ray asked.

“I don’t know.  He’ll probably tail you to wherever Mendez tells you to go,” Jerry said.  “After you’ve taken care of Mendez, give Logan the holdall.  There’s a hundred grand in it, on top of bundles of blank paper.”

“But―”

“There are no buts, Ray.  You’ll have this,” he said, taking a battery-operated black plastic unit that was smaller than a cigarette pack from his pocket and handing it to Ray.

Ray took it, turned it over in his hand and frowned.  “What is it?”

“A receiver.  There’s a tracking device that’s smaller and thinner than a credit card glued to one of the bills.  And take that cell phone on the coffee table with you.  It’s a throwaway with a number in it that you can let Logan know were Mendez arranges to meet you.  I want you to follow Logan after the meet.  He’ll lead you back to wherever he has the two women stashed.  All you’ve got to do is kill them all and recover a memory stick that I think Logan will have on him.”

Ray felt the same level of fear that he had not experienced since he’d been twelve, living with his father and his and brother, Jeff, in
Liberty Square, (colloquially referred to as the Pork & Beans), a crime-ridden and cockroach infested public housing project in Miami-Dade.  They had a rented fourth floor apartment that bordered Martin Luthor King Jr Boulevard with 62nd Street to the south, North 67th Street to the north, State road 933 (West 12th Avenue) to the east, and West 15th Avenue to the west.  Ray had hated his father, the neighbourhood, and the school he had attended, at which at least sixty percent of the pupils carried handguns, knives or both.

Ray and Jeff had been regularly beaten by their father, who had been a petty crook and alcoholic.

It had been Jeff who had taken the action that changed their lives.

Harry Darrow had come home late on a rainy night in October ninety-four.  He had attempted to rob a liquor store, holding up the owner with a Saturday night special; a .25 that he’d bought from a junkie over six months previously and never fired.

Badir Patel had been robbed several times in less than three years, and had decided that enough was enough, and that he would fight back if it happened again.  He saw that the would-be robber was drunk, and that the old pistol was wavering in his shaking hand.

Badir opened the cash register with his left hand, simultaneously reaching under the counter to grasp the handle of a baseball bat.

Harry approached Badir and held out his trembling fingers to take the sheaf of bills from him, totally unprepared for the ensuing attack upon him.

Badir swung the forty-inch long ash wood bat one-handed, to hear a satisfying crack as the end of it connected with Harry’s left temple.  Harry pulled the trigger of the nickel-plated pistol, but the round missed Badir by at least two feet, to smash a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on a shelf behind him.

Harry reeled away from the counter, hurried out into the night and used cross alleys to stagger home, feeling nauseous and dizzy from the blow.

Full of self-pity and anger, Harry lashed out at Ray as he entered the apartment, knocking his younger son to the floor.

He then turned on Jeff, who had jumped up from a shabby settee and was now standing between his brother and father.

“Enough, Dad,” Jeff said, “Just go to bed.”

Harry threw a wild punch, and Jeff ducked and charged, driving the top of his head into his father’s stomach.  The momentum took both of them through the still open door; across the landing to the head of the stairs, and Harry fell back, flailing his arms as he attempted to save himself.

Jeff watched with no sense of pleasure or regret as his father toppled backwards, hit the concrete steps and carried on down the flight to bounce out of sight off the wall and descend another fifteen steps before coming to rest on the second floor landing.

Harry was dead.  A broken neck had been one of the many injuries he had sustained in the fall.  The authorities believed the boys’ statements of the late lowlife’s accidental death while drunk, and Jeff and Ray were made wards of the state.

Within three months they had absconded and randomly made their way to Cleveland, Ohio, where Jeff had settled, eventually prospered, and was now the co-owner of a small boatyard.  Ray had moved on, headed south, and made his home in Charleston.

Could he do it?
  Ray thought as he concentrated on the current circumstances and let the past fade away.

“Are you listening?”  Jerry said.

Ray nodded.

“You up for this?”

“I’ll get it done, boss,” Ray said, hoping that he could.

He left the house at exactly nine o’clock.  Put the receiver in the glove box of the BMW, and the holdall on the passenger seat.  He had collected the small .38 pistol from the tyre at the yard, and it was now in the side pocket of his windcheater.  He checked that his phone was switched on and headed for the city.

Logan followed at a safe distance, keeping at least two cars between the Discovery and the BMW.  The silenced semiautomatic was on the carpeting in the foot well between his legs, and he had bought new dark clothing from a small store that had an ‘Everything must go, 50% off’ sale on.

Ray’s phone started to ring as he drove along highway 119, just a mile short of the bridge that would take him across the river and into the heart of the city.

“Yeah?”  Ray said, easing the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal to slow down as his heart began to beat faster.

“You know who I am, right?”  Sal said.

“Mr Mendez.”

“Correct, Ray.  Have you got the money with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.  Before I tell you where to take it, I want you to know that if this is a setup you’ll die, Ray.  So if there is anyone in the trunk or rear of the car, stop and let them get out.  And if you’re being tailed, call it off.  I expect Brandon to make some attempt to keep his money and have me capped, so be sure that when you arrive you’re alone and unarmed.  Do you understand?”

Ray swallowed hard before saying, “Yeah.”

“Let’s hope so, Ray.  Do you know the area well?”

“I think so.”

“Excellent.  So here’s what you do.  Head for Cinco, and don’t blink or you’ll miss it.  A mile and a half past it you’ll see a sign on the left for the old Elk Creek Mine.  Take that gravel road to the entrance; park the Beemer on the verge and walk in, the gates will be open.  All you should be carryin’ is a holdall with the money inside.  Walk across the old railway ties to the buildin’ you’ll see straight in front of you.”

“OK.”

“Should take you about forty minutes, max.  Don’t disconnect, just put the phone on the seat next to you and keep your radio off.  All I want to hear is engine noise.  And I might change the where and when before you arrive.”

Ray knew where Cinco was.  It was an unincorporated community with a very small population of mostly old folk.  He and Sammy Lester had been fishing in a lake just a little way past it the previous summer and had caught some of the biggest catfish he’d ever seen in his life.

Logan kept well back from the BMW and waited for a call after Ray had slowed down and then headed south.

Ray couldn’t call Logan on the second phone, but held it up near the steering wheel, turned down the volume, tapped out a text message and sent it to the number he had.

Logan received and read the text: headin 4 the elk creek mine past cinco.  He answered it.  Ok, Ray, stay cool.

It was not lost on Logan that Mendez was like many killers, paranoid and cunning.  He must have given Ray instructions and then told him to keep the line open on his phone.  But being ultra careful wouldn’t help him.  He was going to die.

Fifteen minutes later the evening sky darkened and unleashed a summer storm.  Ray had to switch the windshield wipers on to fast and lean forward to stare intently on the road ahead, which was almost invisible through the downpour.  Thunder cracked like bullwhips as lightning pierced the murk and briefly spotlighted the forest in dazzling white.

Logan lost sight of the car he was following.  He slowed and concentrated on his driving, hoping to see the red glow of rear lights reappear in front of him.

Thirty minutes later Ray heard Mendez’s voice calling his name on the phone.  He picked it up and answered, “Yeah?”

“You’re running late, son,” Sal said.

“I’m almost there,” Ray said.  “I’m down to fifteen miles an hour in this fucking rain.”

“No sweat and no change of plan.  I think you’ve got the sense to do this the easy way.  See you soon.”

Ray put the phone back down on the passenger seat and slowed even more as he passed through Cinco and started to watch out for the sign.

Inside the large, two-story, corrugated iron building, Sal ensured that his pistol was loaded, that there was a round in the chamber, and that the safety was off.  When Ray Darrow delivered the cash, he would check it, and then shoot the man and just drive away.

Sal sat back on a dusty straight back wood chair near a grime-smeared window that gave him a view across the yard to the gates, and waited.  Started to look ahead and rationalize.  He had killed quite a few people over the last few days, and it was obvious that the slugs would be matched, and that his prints and DNA would have been found.  That meant that the cops would know his identity.  It followed that his face would have been on TV, and that what he did next would determine his future.  Best short-term plan he could come up with was to find another recluse like the one-armed guy, hole up and change his hairstyle, grow a beard, and make sure that he looked very different to the prison mugshot that they would have.  As for his apartment in Charleston, that was now a no-go area for him.  They may hope that he was dumb enough to go back to it and pick up some money and jewelry he had stashed there, but he wasn’t that stupid.  No, he would hide out, maybe somewhere in Kentucky, and when the heat died down and his wounds were healed he could make his way south to Mexico.  Once he was over the border, they would never hear of him again.  He would assume a new identity and never return to the States.

Ray parked the car.  “I’m here,” he said into his phone.

“About time,” came the reply.  “Come on in then, Ray, don’t be shy.  I want to see you with the bag in your left hand and the phone in your right.  Do it.”

Ray
left the engine running and the headlights on.  Got out of the car and was soaked to the skin after taking only three steps.  He went up to the rusting chain link gates and pushed one open with the holdall.  It swung back a few feet and he walked through, into a large yard peppered with rain-filled potholes.

There were no lights on in the tall building, and the sound of the slanting rain beating against the thin iron panels was almost deafening.  Ray wanted to turn back and run, get in the car and just keep driving north till he reached Ohio.  But he couldn’t.  He decided that Mendez had no quarrel with him, and would not expect to be shot by the guy delivering the money.  And whoever Logan was would surely be nearby, ready to take Mendez down, he fervently hoped.

“Stop there,” Sal shouted from the doorway, to be heard above the storm.

Ray came to a halt thirty feet from where he could see an indistinct human shape that was only a shade lighter than the blackness of the interior of the building behind it.  The deep puddle he was standing in came two thirds of the way up his sports trainers, and the water was icy cold for the time of year.  His guts clenched.  He felt like a rat in a barrel, or more appropriately a condemned man in front of a firing squad.  A rush of adrenaline urged him to flee or fight, but he could do neither.

A lightning bolt crashed into the forest, and the half-second glow of coruscating light brightened the entire area.  Sal smiled.  Darrow was drenched, blinking with fear-filled eyes as rivulets of water ran down his face from hair that was flattened, matted to his skull.

Sal waited for over a minute.  His instincts told him that they were alone.  There was no feasible way that Brandon or anyone else could know where Darrow was…unless there was a tracker on the BMW.  He doubted that.  Brandon was basically a coward.  He would just want the transaction over with and be able to go back to business as usual.

Logan cut the lights and drove slowly along the narrow road.  When he saw the blurry red glow from the BMW’s taillights he slowed to almost walking pace.  He pulled up onto a verge that was thick with weeds and wild flowers twenty yards back from the other car, close up to thorny bushes that almost formed a hedgerow, and switched off the dome light so that there would be no telltale flare of illumination when he exited the Discovery.

Once outside, Logan moved fast, skirting the other car and checking that Ray was not inside it before finding a break in the foliage that he could push through to enter the forest.  He could see the mine’s entrance gates in the glow from the BMW’s headlights, and made his way forward through the trees to the right of them, to follow the rusted, sagging fencing that had been erected many decades ago.

He stopped next to a crumbling concrete post, where the diamond-patterned wire had parted company with it to create a nine-inch gap that he widened by wrenching it back with his bare hands.

Slipping through the break, Logan bent low and jogged toward the side of the large building that he could now see Ray Darrow standing in front of.

The darkness made Logan invisible, and the noise of the storm, the fencing rattling, and the tin panels of the building clanging, masked his footfalls as he edged slowly nearer to Ray.

“OK, Ray,” Sal said.  “Walk forward another five paces, and then throw the bag to me.”

For a second or two Ray was rooted to the spot.  His legs felt weak, and his feet heavy, as though they were encased in diver’s boots weighted with lead.

“Now, Ray,” Sal said.  “I haven’t got all night.”

Ray somehow obeyed, lurching forward another fifteen feet before stopping again.  He wanted to drop the phone from his right hand and reach for the gun in his pocket as he threw the bag, but couldn’t summon up the courage to do it.

Drawing his arm back, Ray swung the now sodden canvas holdall, to let go of it and watch it loop through the air to where Mendez was standing at the threshold of the doors that were slid wide open on their corroded steel tracks.  To Ray, everything appeared to happen in slow motion; almost suspended animation.  It was as if he was encapsulated in a bubble, looking out at a scene that he was isolated from.  He could not feel the raindrops that hammered down from above, or hear the storm that raged around him.  He had somehow withdrawn from the reality of the events that were taking place, and could have been sitting in a cinema, watching an old black and white silent movie.

He imagined that he had all the time in the world.  The holdall was still tumbling in the air, and Mendez was distracted, his face tilted up, his eyes focused on what he believed to be a half-million dollar bounty.

Ray took the time to transfer the cell phone from his right to left hand, and to almost casually reach into his pocket for the pistol.

The bag landed level with Sal, only four feet to his left.  He had decided to check the contents and then shoot Darrow, but unforeseen circumstances have a way of cropping up to necessitate a change of plan at extremely short notice.  Even with the glow of headlights from the car outside the gates, that almost silhouetted Darrow, Sal saw him reach into his pocket, no doubt to draw a weapon.

That Brandon’s lackey was stupid enough to even attempt to kill him, made Sal smile.  However much his boss had promised Darrow was not enough, because he was about to die.

Logan was still moving, up against the wall and closing in on the doorway that Ray Darrow was standing in front of.  He watched as the man threw the bag and then appeared to transfer something from one hand to the other and reach into his jacket.  Fool.

An arm rose up to protrude from the opening in front of Darrow, and Logan could clearly see that the hand was holding a gun.  There was no time to think, just react.  He dropped to one knee, holding his pistol two-handed, took aim, and snapped off three shots.

Sal felt a blow to his wrist, which jerked his arm sideways as he pulled the trigger.  The gun flew from his hand, which drooped, almost severed from his arm like a wilted flower.  He stepped back into the building, turned and ran, ignoring the pain from his thigh, his side, and now the agony that was beginning to blossom in his arm.  He’d been shot, and not by Darrow.  Someone else was here.  He had underestimated Brandon.

Ray saw the shape of a big man drop to his knee against the wall, and counted three muzzle flashes; four, with the one from the gun that Mendez was holding.  The bubble that his mind had generated as a defense mechanism burst, and the noise of the storm almost deafened him.  He twisted round and ran as fast as he could for the gates, zigzagging and expecting to feel the sudden blast of pain as a bullet hit him in the back.  He reached the car, scrambled in and reversed away, only stopping to make a five-point-turn on the narrow road when he was at least two hundred yards from the entrance gates to the mine.  He then sped back to the highway and headed in the direction he had come from, only slowing down when the initial fear and panic subsided and he felt safe.

Pulling onto the forecourt of a closed-down Amoco gas station less than half a mile from Cinco, Ray turned off the lights, took deep breaths and waited for his heart rate to slow to something near normal.  He was still shaking, but was now out of harm’s way and needed to think what to do next.  Logan must have shot Mendez.  What would he do now?  Take the money and head for wherever the women where?  Ray didn’t know.  He took his phone out of his pocket to ring Jerry, but decided against it.  What could he tell his boss, that he had failed to kill Mendez?  No way, José.  He still had the ability to track Logan, if he had managed to kill Mendez and get the money.  Ray could follow him and at least retrieve the flash drive.  Hopefully all was not lost.

Sal ignored all the pain and kept moving along the centre of the large, vacant structure, which reminded him of an old mill or quarry building.  Sporadic flashes of lightning flooded through windows that held broken fangs of glass in the jaws of their rotting frames.  He veered to the side, keeping as near to the wall as possible, and came to a flight of metal stairs.  Gripping the cold, steel handrail, he climbed them and came up into a virtual replica of the ground floor.  The building had been emptied, and parts of the floor were hanging down.  It was unsafe to move far from the stairs.  From below, Sal heard footsteps approaching.  Whoever had accompanied Darrow was not being cautious.  Knew that he was injured and unarmed.  Sal smiled.  Maybe it was overconfidence and not curiosity that killed the cat.

Looking around at his immediate surroundings, Sal spotted a two-feet-long length of thick braided steel cable on the floor, up against the wall next to the stairs.  He picked it up, and then looked for somewhere to set a trap.

Logan paused for a few seconds, still down on one knee.  He watched Darrow bolt for the gates like a frightened deer.  Noted that the bag that presumably held a lot of money was still on the ground at the entrance to the building, with the handgun that had fallen from Mendez’s hand just a few feet from it.

Priorities.

He moved forward.  Picked up the handgun and tucked it in his waistband.  Glanced out across the yard to see the BMW backing away from the gates at speed.

He entered the building and could hear the ring of footsteps on stairs off to his right.  Keeping low, he trotted over to the rear wall into the deepest gloom available and cautiously made his way towards where he had heard Mendez ascending.  Maybe the hitman had a second weapon with him, but Logan doubted that.  But the man was still dangerous, in the way that all wounded predators are.

Logan arrived at the flight of stairs and mounted them one step at a time, slowly and silently, finger curled around the trigger of his gun, all set to squeeze off a shot at anything that moved.

His head rose up above the level of the first floor, and Logan stopped and looked around the cavernous space.  There did not appear to be anywhere for Mendez to hide, apart from behind one of the wide support girders that ran the length of the Building.  He took another step, and then another.

The sudden, powerful blow to his right shoulder instantly paralyzed his arm, and the pistol dropped from his limp fingers to clang on three of the metal stairs before it bounced off and fell to the concrete floor below.

Logan turned and jerked sideways, to be struck a second blow that glanced off the side of his head, grazing it.  Falling backwards, he saw the shape of Mendez appear above him, illuminated by a long, stuttering flash of lightning.

Sal rushed down the steps with his uninjured arm raised back.  He had disarmed the man, injured him, and was only feet away from him, moving quickly like a squat spider, totally focused and intent on caving in the other man’s skull with the makeshift weapon he had found.

As Logan tumbled back he shot his hand out and grasped hold of one of the round metal railings, arresting his fall.  His shoulder muscles and biceps tore as he came to a sudden stop.

Not expecting his intended victim to come to such an abrupt standstill halfway down the flight of stairs, Sal collided into him, fell over him, and curled up in a ball as he bumped down the last few steps to the ground.

Logan got to his feet and followed Mendez down, drawing the killer’s own gun from his waistband, fully intending to shoot him dead.

Sal had many qualities.  Most of them were bad, but dogged determination and the will to win were two that would have been thought highly commendable in most people.

As Logan stepped off the stairs and approached him, Sal lashed out with his legs, slamming them into Logan’s ankles and knocking him over like a bowling pin.

They lay almost face to face, strange bedfellows; both intent on killing the other.  Logan raised the pistol between them, but Sal grasped his wrist and jerked it sideways a millisecond before a bullet left the muzzle, to punch a hole through the rusting galvanized iron of the wall that they were only inches from.  Sal was a strong man, and was totally confident that he could overcome the man that he knew by his size must be Logan.  Summoning up every ounce of his remaining strength, he clenched Logan’s wrist with his powerful, stubby fingers and twisted hard until the gun dropped to the floor.

Logan was a little surprised by Mendez’s physical strength.  It had been a very long time since he had come up against another man that could hold his own against him.  But physical strength was only a small part of hand-to-hand combat.

Logan pulled his head back three inches, and then jerked it forward with all the force he could muster.  His forehead connected with Mendez’s mouth, mashing his top lip against front teeth that broke under the impact.

Sal let out an anguished cry, and then bellowed louder as Logan followed up with a knee to his groin.

In the second that followed, Logan Found Mendez’s nose with his mouth, to envelop it and bite down hard, twisting and tearing until a large part of it came free.  As he spat the gobbet of warm, bloody flesh onto the ridged concrete floor, he reached down with his now free left hand and pulled the lock knife from where it nestled under the sock of his right boot, to flip the blade out and bring it up with an underarm thrust, plunging it into his opponent’s upper abdomen, into his heart.

Sal did not know that he had been mortally wounded.  The white-hot agony emanating from where his nose had been overrode all else.  There was merely a sensation of a tightening in his chest.