Dead Fall (3 page)

“You should get your head massaged,” VanMeter suggested. “Maybe it'll allow some good advice to sink in.
Stay away from our investigation, Joe
.”

Despite how official she made it sound, I knew she was giving me a friendly warning. VanMeter was one of those cops who actually appreciated the fact I was around.

“If I find you interfering in our investigation again, I'll make sure you go in on a charge,” Holker added.

“I was just offering my condolences to a mutual friend of Candice Berry,” I said, more for Holker's sake than anyone. “There's no law against that, is there, Detective Holker?”

“Just get outta here, goddamnit,” Holker snarled.

I was about to say something to knock the jumped up little shit down a peg or two, but the Seminole woman got in before me. Obviously she'd been listening keenly to our conversation, and taking names.

“Detective Holker, it's so good to see you again so soon. Are you here for your usual, or is there something ‘special' you wish to try this time?”

Holker practically spluttered, and I caught an amused glint in VanMeter's eye.

I went out of the door and my grin was back in place.

It was short-lived, though, because as soon as I was on the street—the very place from where Candice Berry was taken—my mind was back on Marvin Whalen and Mick O'Neill.

M
ARVIN
W
HALEN WOULD
have people believe he'd earned his nickname for his prodigious manhood, but he was having a laugh. He'd gained the moniker “Moby Dick” because he was huge, blubber-fat, and white as snow, like Captain Ahab's aquatic nemesis. Even under the Floridian sun, he had the sort of complexion that didn't tan. His short hair, a pale reddish color, was wispy, and he'd either had his eyebrows and lashes burned off in a barbecuing accident or he was naturally hairless. To be honest, his wasn't the kind of physique I had any desire to imagine nude.

He walked across the street in front of where I'd parked my car, flanked on both sides by two whip-thin Hispanics, his huge belly bouncing with each ponderous step. He was wearing a pale blue shirt that both me and my friend Rink could have fitted inside, and Rink's built like a pro wrestler. He was also wearing cargo pants, big pockets on the side, and huge white sneakers that glowed ethereally under the street lamps. He didn't appear to be carrying, but I guessed his homeboys were. As well as baggy jeans and white wife beaters, they had suit jackets on, and as hot as the night was, there was only one reason they'd do so: to conceal the guns in their shoulder rigs.

I made myself a bet that the Hispanic dudes were the same guys who'd lifted Candice Berry off the street outside Sheridan's Parlor. The gun used to murder her would have been dumped soon afterward, but I also wagered it had been replaced by a new one. Whalen's crew were into good old fashioned intimidation to extract protection money, and I doubted either of the chumps with Whalen could frighten a little girl without waving a gun under her nose.

Whalen led the way to his crib, a loft apartment over a Thai restaurant. When I'd cased his building earlier I'd grabbed myself a take-out snack of shrimps and noodles, and a large black coffee in a waxed cup. The greasy boxes and empty cup lay in the passenger foot well of my Audi. I'd had a long wait before Whalen returned home, still I guessed my ass wasn't as chafed as his, judging by the way his cargo pants rode up with every knock-kneed stride he took.

After satisfying my hunger and caffeine habit, I'd spent the rest of the time cleaning and maintaining my gun. Loaded, and ready to go, I leaned forward in my seat and fed it into its carrying position at my lower back. Whalen and his buddies had reached the door up to his loft apartment by then, and I watched as the big man took out a key on a long chain and undid the locks. Partly I expected him to wave off his bodyguards, but it seemed the day's business wasn't yet at an end. That suited me fine. Under Whalen's order one or both of the Hispanics was probably responsible for abducting and murdering Candice, and it was better that I dealt with all of them in one go than have to hunt them down individually. Whalen went inside first, followed by the two skinnies. The door was closed. By now it was late enough that the Thai restaurant had closed its doors, but there was most likely staff members still inside. I didn't doubt that some of the immigrant workers lived on the premises. I'd no intention of placing any of them at risk, but neither did I want any witnesses to what I had in mind. I waited another half hour until all the lights went off and whoever was inside had locked down tight and retired for the night. I pulled on leather gloves. I then left my car and angled past the front of Whalen's place and down a narrow alley that ran to the back of the restaurant.

Earlier I'd reconned the alley and knew what I'd find at the back.

I moved through the rear service yard, avoiding Dumpsters and a stack of piled crates by memory and approached the metal fire escape that would take me up to the back of the loft. My earlier scouting mission warned of creaking stairs, and now I went up them, avoiding any that would shriek under my weight and announce my approach. I made it to the top without raising any alarm. There I crouched, listening. There was no hint that any witness had seen me from the restaurant, and Whalen and his buddies were laughing too hard to notice the subtle noises of my ascent.

Having jimmied the locks already, I gently eased open the back door, and my ears were assaulted by drunken hilarity. Finished work for the night, the trio was celebrating with liquor and beer. As a background accompaniment to their laughter, I could detect the exaggerated moans and cheesy soundtrack of a skin flick playing on TV. It was like walking in on a college frat party.

The three of them had their backs to me. Whalen was sprawled out in an easy chair that had become misshapen beneath his weight. The two bodyguards—or whatever their role—were on a large couch. They had cans of Bud in hand, joints in their mouths. On a large plasma screen TV three oiled-up naked girls were writhing in mock ecstasy and being very inventive with a can of whipped cream and various items of fruit.

“Now that's the kind of diet I want to go on!” Whalen whooped, to his friends' lascivious agreement.

“Yeah. Talk about getting one of your essential five a day,” I said.

My joke didn't elicit any laughter.

The two Hispanics dropped their cans of beer, and struggled to complete a further two tasks at the same time: they tried to get up and pull out their guns. They weren't the best when it came to multitasking. By the time they'd struggled partway up from the sunken couch, and inserted their hands under their armpits, I had the barrel of my SIG jammed to the nape of Whalen's neck.

“Sit down,” I snapped, “and show me your hands. Otherwise those girls are going to be covered in your boss's brains.”

The skinnies weren't as stupid as they looked. They showed empty palms.

Without losing contact with his head, I moved around Whalen so that I could face the three of them, and ended up with my SIG wedged under his nose. The rims of his lashless eyelids were puffy and red as Whalen squinted up at me.

“Who . . . who are you and what do you want?” he managed to say, though my gun barrel bumped his teeth a couple of times.

“I'm called Joe Hunter. Heard of me?”

Something moved in the recesses of his gaze and I knew that he had. The Hispanics shared a glance, and I recognized fear. Good enough, I thought. They knew who I was and what I was capable of. That should smooth the process of getting answers from them.

“Do you know why I'm here?” I asked.

Whalen shook his head slightly, fearful of making too big a movement that might jostle my trigger finger. “No,” he wheezed.

“Candice Berry,” I said.

“Wh . . . who . . . ?” Whalen said.

I withdrew the gun from his mouth, brought it down on the side of his big skull. The clack of metal on bone was louder than the moans of the onscreen antics. “Don't play me for an idiot,” I growled, and stepped away from him so that I could cover all three.

Whalen pressed a palm to his injured head. It began to swell instantly, and a trickle of blood streaked down his cheek and dripped from his chin. “Son of a bitch,” he groaned.

“Hurts, does it?” I asked. “Not as bad as a bullet to the back of the head.”

As I said it, I watched the Hispanics for a reaction and again I caught a nervous glance between them. The one to the far left squinted at his pal, shook his head very slightly.

“OK,” I went on, directing my question to the Hispanics. “Let's get down to business, shall we? Which one of you murdered Candice?”

“Wasn't me, man,” the one on the right said very quickly.

His friend shot him a look to curdle milk. “Wasn't me, either,” he added lamely.

“What do you say, Whalen? Which of your buddies pulled the trigger?”

Whalen patted at the bleeding lump on his head. “I couldn't say, man. I wasn't there.”

“Just like you, isn't it? You point the weapon but haven't the balls to pull the trigger. So you get these dickless fools to do it for you.”

The man on the left was growing more nervous by the second. His tongue was darting in and out as he licked dry lips. He made a show of reaching for an ashtray, supposedly to douse his joint. I played stupid, as if I was fooled by the innocuous move. I even gave him further opportunity by holding Whalen under my gaze.

“Pointless denying it. We all know who killed Candice, and it doesn't matter who was the triggerman. You were all in it together, and to me that makes you all equally responsible. What I don't get is why any of you would take the fall for an asshole like Mick O'Neill.” I smirked at the way Whalen's head came up at mention of his boss's name. “Ah, I see I've guessed right,” I went on. “O'Neill had you kill the woman. For what? Because she'd witnessed what happened to William Murray?”

“I ain't saying nothing, and neither are any of my guys,” Whalen said angrily. He cast a surreptitious glance at the Hispanic who was now creeping a hand toward his left ankle. “What you goin' to do: shoot us? Better that what O'Neill will do to us if we squeal.”

“One thing I do know, Whalen. O'Neill won't have you dropped from his roof. Fat bastard like you hitting the deck, he'll have to have the foundations to his building rebuilt.”

“Fuck you,” Whalen snapped. He was actually braver than I'd initially taken him for. He tried to draw my fire by flicking out his hand and sending a palmful of his blood toward my face. His distraction would have worked if I hadn't been expecting it. I stepped deeply to one side, and the blood sprayed over the TV screen. At the same time, I aimed my gun not at the fat man but at the Hispanic on the far left, who was coming up with a snub-nosed revolver in hand, the one which he'd snuck out of the holster on his ankle.

I fired before he did, and my round struck him in the throat, destroyed his trachea, and he fell back, gurgling on the blood flooding his throat.

His friend let out a scream, a mixture of terror and rage, and fought to pull his gun from his shoulder holster. I shot him through the chest, then, as his hands flopped, put another round in his open mouth.

By then, Whalen was up, and he knew he was a dead man and went for broke. He lurched at me with his hands going for my neck, intent on crushing the life from me. He'd more chance at killing me if he fell on top and smothered me to death. He wasn't armed, and I wasn't happy about killing him in cold blood. But then I thought about Candice Berry, and pictured her children waiting at home for their mom who'd never return to them, and decided, fuck it. I shot Whalen through the heart, three times in quick succession.

He crashed down on his front as I sidestepped his girth. Even if the gunfire hadn't already woken them, the thump of his body on floorboards would rouse the Thai staff downstairs. Time to get out of there.

Ideally I'd planned gaining an admission from Whalen and his cronies, and though it probably would have ended in them dead, had hoped to rig the scene so that it looked like they'd fallen out and killed each other. Having blasted them all with my gun it meant I had to get rid of the weapon before it was tied back to the scene through forensic investigation and ballistics reports. Pissed me off: I liked that gun.

H
OLKER AND
V
AN
M
ETER
would suspect that I was responsible for the deaths of Whalen and his crew, but I was certain that I couldn't be incriminated. My gun had been stripped to its component parts, the barrel drilled out to destroy the unique rifling, and then each bit deposited out in Hillsborough Bay. Gloves, clothes, and shoes had all been incinerated and I'd scrubbed my hair, face, and body to remove even the tiniest trace of gunshot residue. There was no CCTV footage available, and no one had seen me as I returned to my parked car—or if they had, I got no hint of them. My greatest fear was that one or more of the Thai restaurant staff had got a look at me, but maybe loud noise and crashing weights was a feature they'd come to expect from an upstairs neighbor like Whalen and they'd slept through the entire incident. That, or being largely illegal immigrants, they'd keep their mouths shut for fear the police started digging into their backgrounds.

I didn't let fear of discovery slow me.

Whalen hadn't exactly admitted that O'Neill had ordered Candice Berry murdered, but neither had he denied it. His reactions, and outspoken denials, were enough to confirm it to me. Sure, such evidence would never sway a jury in court, but that's why O'Neill continued to get away with his crimes. Well, no longer. Rink would have been proud of me: I devised a plan.

I
N THE EARLY
hours of the following morning, I was standing on Columbia Drive, looking up at the back of O'Neill's building. I'd kept my word to Holker and hadn't gone near Channel Drive, but there was no need when there was a back way into the building one block over. To my right I could see the runway lights of Peter O. Knight Airport, but there were no flights taking off or landing. There was no traffic on the roads, and no pedestrians. I walked forward, dressed now in black T-shirt, black combat trousers with bulging pockets, black boots. I'd replaced my SIG Sauer for another one of the same model from one of my stashes throughout the city. Some people have queried why I prefer a 9mm SIG Sauer to other guns. The pat answer is that it's the gun I'm most familiar with from my days training in the skill of Point Shooting, but that's only part of the story. See, .44 and .357 rounds are man killers, whereas the smaller 9mm round can't be relied upon. However, a .44 or .357 will also put a hole right through a man's torso, and that's fine if he's the only one in your line of fire. When I was taking on terrorists, often there were hostages to take into consideration. Last thing you wanted was to plug a terrorist, only for the bullet to also hit the innocent person behind them. I always preferred a 9mm, so that there was less chance of collateral damage.