Aftermath (8 page)

“Why did he think that you could arrange it?”

“He knows I did time.  Asked me if I’d take care of Jennings for him.  I said no, but told him that I knew a couple of guys that would.”

“I’ll buy that.  So Richard Jennings was whacked.  Why the decision to go after the wife and daughter?”

“Because Brandon is fuckin’ paranoid.  He reckoned that Jennings would have kept records, and that he might have passed them to one of them.”

“Would’ve been better if he’d braced Jennings and got the facts before he put the contract out.”

Sammy shrugged.

Logan went to the kitchen again and picked up a notepad and pen that he’d seen on a counter, under a wall-mounted phone.  Went back and asked Sammy for Brandon’s work and home addresses and wrote them down.  “What’s the current state of play, Sammy?” he said.  “Has Brandon told you to call Mendez off?  Or is the contract still live?”

Sammy thought about lying but decided against it.  “He still wants the job done.  Sal is up in the mountains somewhere, looking for the women.”

“I think we’re done here,” Logan said to Sammy as he pocketed the pad and pen.  “I’ve got your wallet and cell, and if I need to find you again I will, and then I’ll kill you.”

Sammy made his move.  Physically he was no match for this tall, broad guy that had appeared from nowhere.  But he was fast.  He sprung to his feet and darted for the bedroom door, ignoring the burning pain from his knee.  Without hesitation he ran around the bed to pull open the top draw of the nightstand.

Logan appeared at the door and leaned against the jamb.

“You looking for this?” he asked Sammy, pulling the Glock from his pocket and aiming it at Sammy’s heart.

Sammy just sat down on the bed.  He waited for the bullet and hoped that death would be as quick and painless as he’d made it for Roy.

Logan walked around the bed to within an arm’s length of the now cowering young man and pistol-whipped him across the head, twice.

Before he left the apartment, Logan bound Sammy’s wrists and ankles together with duct tape he found in a kitchen unit drawer that was full of small hand tools. He then wiped the gun with paper towels and pressed it into Sammy’s right hand, making sure that the inside of his index finger came into contact with the trigger.  He left the Glock on a counter in the kitchen next to a plastic bag full of coke that he’d found hanging from a piece of wire in the toilet cistern.  He also wiped the few surfaces and objects he’d touched, including the two halves of the broken mug.

He waited till he was out on the street before phoning the police to give Sammy’s address, and to inform them that there was a guy with a loaded gun and drugs there.

As far as Logan could work out there were only two problems left to take care of.  One was Jerry Brandon, and the other was Sal Mendez.

Maybe this would all be resolved in the very near future.  As always, time would tell.

Sal
parked on the grass verge and walked back fifty yards to the entrance to Mountain Dew Lodges.  The stone chip drive led to a single-storey office and shop combo.  He went inside and to the right where a woman he pegged at being in her early sixties with scraped back gray hair was sitting on a stool behind a wood counter with carvings of squirrels, raccoons and other critters on the front.  There was a tall carousel with postcards in the slots next to the cash register.  And a fan on the counter was whirring as it turned back and forth through 180°.  Sal’s eyes were drawn to a long, loose wisp of the woman’s hair that drifted in the breeze the fan generated.

“Help you, sir?”  Amy Carson asked Sal.

“Hope so,” Sal replied.  “I want to surprise my sister.  I believe she’s stayin’ here with her hubby and my niece.  They would’ve arrived sometime yesterday.”

“Name?”  Amy asked, opening the guest register that was out of sight at the left side of the cash register.

“Jennings,” Sal said.  “Rita Jennings.”

“Sorry,” Amy said.  “There’s no one of that name here.”

Sal gave her a puzzled look.  “Rita’s slim with dark hair, and my brother-in-law is hard to miss, he’s about six-three and fit looking.  They’re drivin’ a dark-blue Discovery.”

“Definitely not here, friend,” Amy said.  “You’ve got the wrong place.  Maybe they’re staying at the Mountaintop Hotel and you’ve got the name mixed up.”

“Maybe your right,” Sal said.  “Whereabouts is it?”

“Three miles east of here, you can’t miss it.”

Sal thanked her and walked back out to the highway.  He was enjoying the hunt.  Kept running different scenarios through his mind as he drove up the serpentine road towards the next place his marks might be at.  Maybe he would take out the big guy first, to eliminate him as a potential threat.  He had proved that he was dangerous, and Sal wasn’t in the habit of taking unnecessary risks.  Roy had always been careful in the past, but had been no match for the stranger who’d appeared from nowhere to protect the woman.  And he had Roy’s gun now, so would have to be capped on sight.  It also occurred to Sal that he hadn’t got laid for a few weeks.  Maybe it would work out that he would have the time to enjoy himself with the bitches before he double-tapped them both and let Sammy know that the job was done.

To Sal Mendez, killing for money was a vocation.  Not many people got paid so well for work that they loved doing.  He had been in the army, and lucky enough to see action and be able to whack total strangers in faraway lands with the blessing of his great country’s government.  They’d trained him to kill, and it was something that he’d got a taste for and was exceptionally good at.

A few minutes later he saw the sign for Bear Country Cabins.  Drove in and parked at the right side of the narrow dirt road.  Low branches from towering pines scraped against the bodywork of the Taurus.  He climbed out and strolled round a curve to where he could see some of the cabins nestled in front of a lake; each separated from the other by plenty of distance and thick foliage to give the guests an even greater sense of privacy.

The first cabin he came to had been constructed with a large plate-glass window either side of a door that had a sign stating ‘Welcome to Bear Country Cabins’ hanging on the inside of it.

A traditional bell-on-a spring attached to the door rang to alert entry as Sal went in the office.  The reception counter was to the right and was bright and cheerful, with no kitsch carvings, just a few posters on the wall depicting mountain scenes, waterfalls and sunsets over lakes and forest.  To the left was an archway leading into a small store that sold basic groceries at inflated prices.

“Hi, friend,” a tall, pencil-thin guy with a full dark beard that looked in need of a comb said as he appeared through a door at the rear.

“Hi back at ya,” Sal said.

“I’m Norman Benton, the head cook and bottle washer around here.  How can I help you?”

“I’m lookin’ for a friend, Norm’, Sal said.  “He’s as big as a tree and drives a dark-blue Discovery.”

“That’ll be Mr Logan in cabin three,” Norman said.

“That’s him,” Sal said.  “I aim on surprisin’ him.”

“Not at the moment, friend.  I’m an early riser.  Saw him drive off just after daybreak, and he hasn’t come back yet.”

“What about his wife and daughter?” Sal asked.  “They go with him?”

Norman shook his head.  “He was on his ownsome.”

Sal had choices.  He could wait for the man calling himself Logan to return, or go to the cabin and take care of the women.  And Norm now figured in the equation.  Left alive, he could give police a good description of him.  Sal knew that the most risk was at the POK, which was his own acronym for Point of Kill.

Looking casually out through the window and then at a plan on the wall that showed the layout of the cabins, Sal checked that there was no one in sight before drawing his pistol, chambering a round and pointing it at Norman.

“Here’s the deal,” Sal said to the now open-mouthed proprietor.  “I leave you tied up in the back and go about my business, or shoot you where you stand.  Which is it to be?”

“Being tied up seems the way to go,” Norman said.  “But the only money I’ve got is what’s in the register, about two-hundred bucks.”

“Lock the door up and turn the sign over, Norm,” Sal said.  “Then go out back slow and easy.”

Norman did exactly as he was told.  Walked over to the door, locked it and flipped the Open sign over to show the legend, Closed – Gone Fishin’.  He then made his way through to his living quarters in the extension at the rear of the building.

Sal followed him in, pushed the door closed behind him with his left hand and clubbed Norman hard a couple of times across the side of his head.

Norman was dazed and incapacitated by the two crippling blows.  He fell to his knees with his eyes tightly shut and his teeth clenched.

Sal had absolutely no capacity to feel remorse for his actions.  He deftly screwed the silencer to the SIG and held the weapon steady as a rock, angled upwards just two inches away from the base of the man’s skull as he pulled the trigger.

No pain, no memories, no knowledge of having ever existed.  Norman exited life without any thought running through a brain that had been instantly reduced to an insensate lump of devastated tissue.

Sal walked to the back of the room and closed the curtains at the windows so that no one could look in to see the body on the floor.  He then made his way through a small kitchen and out of a screened door.  The diagram on the wall of the reception area had shown that the cabins were positioned in a large semicircle numbered one to fourteen, left to right.  And old Norm had been superstitious, because there was no cabin thirteen.

Moving to the left and behind a screen of bushes, Sal followed a trail that skirted the first six cabins and led to the lake.  He stepped through a gap onto a short access walkway and stopped in deep shadow at the side of cabin number three.

“Maybe he won’t come back?”  Sharon said to her Mum.

“I know he will,” Rita said.  “And I’m going to keep believing that.  Without Logan, I have no idea what we would do.”

“He could get himself killed trying to protect us.  He isn’t even armed.”

“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing, sweetheart.  I’ve never met anyone that instilled me with so much confidence.”

“What about Dad?”  Sharon said sharply.

“You know what I mean.  Logan is in some ways a very dangerous man.  He has obviously dealt with violent people before, and has no qualms about hurting them if that is the only way to solve a problem.”

“And you admire that?”

“No, Sharon I don’t
admire
it, but at this moment in time we
need
him, and I’m grateful that he has offered to help us.  I’m sure that he doesn’t go out of his way to look for trouble.  I see him as a loner; a man that would rather keep to himself and not get involved.”

“So why do you think he
is
helping total strangers?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe because he saw a woman in danger and has a chivalrous streak that won’t let him turn his back and walk away.  You’ve talked to him.  What do you think?”

Sharon recalled the conversation that she had had with Logan.  She had never met anyone like him.  Her mum was right.  He was exactly who they needed to keep them safe from harm.  Logan had seemed reluctant to talk about himself, but had opened up a little.  Let her see a glimpse of a true individual; a self-sufficient man with no desire to be part of the rat race of life.  He was content in his own company and had no real use for other people.  Or maybe his only weakness was that he couldn’t face having something or someone to lose, so held the world at bay by moving through it without stopping too long in any one place to start taking root.

“I suppose you’re right, Mum,” Sharon said.  “I think he has a sense of duty.  He can’t turn his back on a situation and walk away from it.”

Sharon went into the bedroom to get her laptop out of her rucksack.  Walked back into the kitchen and headed for the back door. Went out onto the porch, to sit at a rustic bench and power up her computer.  She clicked on her Pictures, selected a file and opened one to look at JPEG images of her father, mother and herself.

“Excuse me,” a voice said, and Sharon looked up to see a man wearing a dark suit, white shirt and striped tie walking slowly towards her.  She thought that he looked like a businessman.  He was swarthy-looking, with dark eyes and black hair, and reminded her of a janitor at high school who’d always been polite and friendly, but came across as creepy; someone you wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with in a dark alley.

Sal smiled at her, and then just climbed up the three steps onto the porch, grabbed her by the throat with his left hand and squeezed hard enough to cut off her breath as he hauled Sharon up off the seat and walked her backwards through the partly open door as he drew his gun.

Logan
drove across the river and made his way to Brandon’s car showroom.  Parked in a space outside a print company a hundred yards away and walked back.

It was quiet.  Sun glinted off a couple hundred windshields and a ton of chrome.  A young salesman in a powder-blue suit was walking a middle-aged woman around a large silver-colored sedan.  And a teenager in T-shirt and denim shorts was washing a compact Toyota in a bay.

Logan opened the door and was hit by ice-cold air from vents in the ceiling as he entered the showroom.  He walked up to a long, shiny maple veneered counter and waited for the blond behind it to finish up a call and turn her attention to him.

Marcie smiled as she looked up at the tall, ruggedly handsome man.  “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, after using her tongue to push the gum she’d been chewing out of the way against the inside of her cheek.

“Yeah,” Logan said.  “I need to speak with Jerry.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“No.  But he’ll want to see me, we’re old buddies.  Why don’t you just hit the button on your intercom and tell him that Roy’s friend Mr Johnson is here?”

Marcie picked up her phone and hit 2, which connected her to the phone on Jerry’s desk.  She told him what Logan had said, word for word, and waited a few seconds until her boss told her to send the visitor in.

“Mr Brandon’s office is through there, first on the left,” Marcie said, pointing to the door at the right-hand side of the counter, and chewing on her gum again as Logan ambled away from her.

He didn’t knock, just walked in and took a seat in the chair facing Jerry Brandon across a large teak desk.

“So you’re Johnson,” Jerry said, reluctantly impressed by the sheer size of the man who was staring impassively at him.

“It’s as good a name as any,” Logan said, noting that Brandon’s eyes flicked down and to the left a couple of times, to where there was probably a half-open drawer with a gun in it.

“And just exactly what do you want?”  Jerry asked.  “Why have you come here?”

Logan said nothing.  Just kept looking at Brandon, intimidating him by nothing more than his presence and the fact that the man knew what he’d done to Roy Naylor.

“Either share what’s on your mind or get the hell out,” Jerry said.

Logan could see beads of sweat beginning to form at the hairline of what he decided was a toupee; an expensive one, but still as phony as the man wearing it.

“OK,” Logan said.  “I came here because you don’t listen to good free advice when it’s given.  I just stopped by for coffee with Sammy, and he told me that you still want Mendez to finish what he started.  As you can imagine, Sammy is now in a lot of pain, and in deep shit with the police, who will be at his address as we speak and will have found drugs and an illegal firearm to spike their interest in him.  Maybe the gun has history.  One way or the other it’s another of your third-rate team out of the picture.”

Jerry slowly worked his right hand under the desktop towards the drawer as Logan spoke.  Let his fingers do the walking up the front of it and eased them inside.

Logan almost leisurely raised his foot and gave the back of the desk a sharp kick.  The drawer snapped shut and broke two of Jerry’s fingers.  He howled in pain and withdrew his hand.

Ten seconds later Marcie opened the door and stared at her boss, not knowing what had happened or what action she should take.  Jerry was cradling one hand with the other.  She could see that the stranger was sitting in a chair at the side of the desk nearest to her.  He looked relaxed with his legs crossed and his hands clasped behind his head.

“Leave us alone, Marcie” Jerry gasped as he struggled to manage the pain.  “I trapped my hand, is all.  I’m OK.”

Marcie left as quickly as she had appeared.

“Put your hands on the top of the desk where they won’t get you into any more trouble,” Logan said.

Jerry complied.

“You need to know that whatever Jennings had on you died with him.”  Logan said.  “He didn’t pass anything to Rita or Sharon.  As far as they’re concerned he was an honest, hardworking husband and father.”

Logan withdrew a cell from his pocket.  Switched it on and put it on speaker so that he would hear both sides of the conversation.  “This belongs to Sammy,” he said.  “I’m going to dial Mendez’s number and hand it to you.  I want you to tell him to back off.  Impress on him that the contract is cancelled.  And make sure he understands.  Tell him that he’ll receive his fee in full, but that the women are no longer marks.”

“What if Mendez has already found them?”

“If he’s chasing down the GPS signal from the tracker on Rita’s 4x4, then he won’t have,” Logan said.  “I need for you to know that their safety now and ad infinitum is all that will stop me from breaking your neck, Brandon.  After today, if I ever have reason to look you up, it will be to kill you.”

Jerry’s face paled to almost the same colour as his white suit.  He’d met many hard men and thugs in his life, but had never been this scared of a single unarmed man before.

Logan dialed the number, leaned forward and pushed the phone across the desktop.  Jerry picked it up.  It rang five times before Sal Mendez accepted the call and said, “Yeah, Sammy, whaddya want?”

Rita was walking back into the living area from the bathroom when the kitchen door burst open.  Sharon was almost purple in the face, eyes bulging.  A man that Rita had never seen before in her life was gripping Sharon by the throat with one hand and holding a gun up against the side of her head with the other.

“Sit down, lady,” Sal said to Rita.  “All I want is the fuckin’ disk or memory stick.  Mess me about any more than you already have and I’ll gut shoot your daughter and you can watch her writhe about on the floor till she croaks.”

Rita wanted to attack the man, but knew that it would be a futile gesture.  She walked woodenly across to the timber-framed settee and sat down.

“Good girl,” Sal said, relaxing his grip on the girl’s throat and shoving her hard, causing her to sprawl out full-length on the large, forest-green rug that covered much of the planked floor.  “So where is it?” he said.

“Logan has it,” Rita said.

Sal frowned.  “Who the fuck is Logan?”

“The man who is helping us.”

“Where is he now?”

“He went to Charleston and took the USB stick with him,” Rita lied.

“If I search this shithole and find it, can you imagine what I’ll do to you both?”

“I give you my word, he took it.”

“Why.”

“Because he thought it would be safer.  If anything happened to us while he was away, then he had evidence he could go to the police with.”

Sal thought it through.  Just stood there with the gun trained on Sharon and wondered what to do next.  He was used to straight hits without annoying complications like this.

“OK,” Sal said to Rita.  “Tell me all about this Logan guy.”

“There isn’t much I can tell you,” Rita said.  “When I was at the trailer park he turned up from nowhere and I asked him to help me.”

“Why would he do that?”

Rita hiked her shoulders.  “I don’t know.”

Sharon sat up very slowly and massaged her throat.  It hurt when she swallowed.

“He’s helping us because he has a sense of right and wrong and doesn’t like to see people like you threaten or hurt people.”  Sharon said.  Her voice was raspy.

“What do you know about him?”  Sal asked her.

“That he is an ex-cop.  He s a drifter by choice, and doesn’t have any ties.”

Sal thought about it.  If he whacked the women and Logan couldn’t contact them, then the contractor wouldn’t give Sammy the cash to pay the balance on the hits, and the police would be given whatever the information was that had set this ball rolling.

“When will he be back?”  Sal asked.

“Before nightfall,” Rita said.

Sal didn’t want to wait for hours.  There was the body of the resort’s owner going cold not too far away to consider.  Maybe it would be better to take the women with him.  Keep them alive until he could lure Logan in, kill him and get the stick.

Rita could almost see the cogs turning in the dark eyes that stared almost unseeing at a point somewhere between her and Sharon.  She eased her hand slowly under the cushion nearest to her on the settee and touched the butt of the gun Logan had left with her.  Could she do it?  Did she have the ability to pull the weapon out, thumb the safety off and shoot him before he could put a bullet in her or Sharon?

The scene was like a tableau in a waxwork museum.  All three occupants of the cabin were unmoving as the seconds ticked by.

The phone startled them all.  Sal took it from his pocket and checked caller ID.  It was Sammy Lester.  He said, “Yeah, Sammy, whaddya want?”

“This isn’t Sammy,” Jerry said.  “I’m the guy that arranged with him for you and Naylor to make my problems disappear.”

“How do I know who the hell you are?” Sal said.  “You could be a cop.”

“If I was a cop and had this number, then you’d already be in custody, you moron.”

Sal let it circulate in his mind.  It made sense.  “So where’s Sammy?” he asked.

“He got to meet the guy that hurt Naylor.”

“Logan?”

“I don’t know his real name, only that he’s big and mean and that he’s here sitting at the other side of my fuckin’ desk in Charleston.  So listen up real good, the contract is cancelled.  I don’t want either of those women harmed.”

“I’m with them, now,” Sal said.  “You sure that―”

Logan reached across and took the phone out of Jerry’s hand.

“Hey, Sal, how’re you doing?” he said.

“You Logan?”  Sal asked.

“You’d better believe it.”

“Well, I’m in cabin number three with your two lady friends,
you’d
better believe that.  And I still owe you for what you did to Roy.”

Logan didn’t take his eyes off Jerry, but his mind was racing.  Was he talking to a professional killer or a psycho?  Face to face he would have recognized which instantly and been able to play him accordingly.  Over the phone was a big problem.

“I’m surprised, Sal,” he said.  “I thought that when I found the tracker and fixed it to the semi you’d have been fooled.”

“So who’s the fool now, Logan?”

“I’m not sure yet.  You have a lot of money coming for just walking away.  The guy you were going to cap the women for is Jerry Brandon, and he’s just told you
not
to do it.  As for Roy, he got off light.  And I doubt you and he are big buddies.”

“I still feel I should finish what I started, after all the trouble you’ve put me to, Logan.”

“Your call, Sal,” Logan said.  “But why would you want me on your case?  Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, an ex-cop, and now a bum.  Just some guy.”

“That’s right, Sal, just some guy that knows who you are, and has all the time in the world to run you down.  You’re a pro, right?  Why make an enemy of someone like me?”

Sal knew that he was listening to logic, but the calm voice on the phone was pissing him off big-time, so he disconnected.

There was nothing Logan could do.  He put the phone back in his pocket and kept staring at Jerry.

“Get real, Logan,” Jerry said.  “What would you have done if you were me?  You look like the kind of no-nonsense guy that draws a hard line and doesn’t let anything stop you doing whatever it takes to set things right.”

Logan said nothing.

“I was at high school with Richard Jennings,” Jerry continued.  “We kept in touch down the years, and when he lost his job I hired him on.  I trusted the guy.  Thought he was a friend, for Chrissake.  And then he tells me that he knows I’m cooking the books before he gets the paperwork.  He gave me a choice, cough up half a million or he would make a phone call.  Said he had proof of what I’d been doing?”

“So you had him murdered, right?”

“He was trying to blackmail me.  Wouldn’t listen to reason.  Like I said, what would you have done?”

“I wouldn’t have been ripping the IRS off to start with,” Logan said.  “So I wouldn’t have had to do anything.”

“And now you’re just picking a side and playing God.  Who made this your business?”

“I walked into a situation.  Decided that nobody had the right to murder a defenceless woman in cold blood, so
made
it my business.  I’ve got choices, now.  I could just phone the police and the IRS and give them what I know.  Let them investigate you.  Or I could kill you now and walk away.  What do you think, Jerry?”

“That we should be able to make a deal.  How much will it cost for you to just forget all about this and vanish?”

Logan smiled.  “Maybe if I needed money and thought that having possessions was important, and I was an asshole like you, then I’d give it some serious thought.  But I’ve got everything I need, Jerry, including integrity.  What you need to do is convince me that this is over, and that Rita and Sharon can get back to their lives.”