Honorable Assassin (36 page)

“This is not the kind of thing I would have
expected out of them. They’re mostly a bunch of degenerate idiots.
Drunks and fuckalls can’t plan an operation like this. Hmm. Who
were the first men killed? Not the Chinamen, before that.”

“Wise guys. The ones on the dock worked for
the mob is what it looks like.” Chief Inspector Slaughter had put a
lot of thought into his theories. He knew they sounded a bit
far-fetched but he also stood behind them. He didn’t want to debate
the points because they were just theories but was afraid the
Superintendent would reject them out of hand.

“This thing has been going on for a year and
a half or so, maybe longer.” Superintendent Barlow was unexpectedly
taking the Inspector’s side. “The attacks began with assaults on
the shipping, north of the city.”

“I thought we closed that case. Didn’t they
decide Lee Pierce was behind that?” Slaughter was not beyond a
little reverse psychology. He discovered that his thoughts were not
far from Barlow’s.

“Lee Pierce was a bully and a wife beater.
He sold guns to anyone who wanted them, but he didn’t do the truck
killings. Yes, the evidence all pointed to him but it was bullshit.
Why would a man with a cache of new firearms use an old rifle, with
obsolete ammunition, and then leave it in his trailer? The answer
is, he wouldn’t and didn’t. He was set up the same way the Russians
were set up. The same way that mob cash van was set up, down in,
what was it, Hill Top? Yeah, Hill Top. Same way, same man or team
of men. This is what the problem is, but this is also where the
solution is going to lie. Our professional is starting to get
greedy and is looking to take a big slice of the fat Sydney pie for
himself. Find out who is new in the Dark Knights. Within the last
couple of years. That’s going to be our man. Use Senior Sergeant
Black. I coordinate with him on Saturdays from time to time. He
seems amenable to proper suggestion, but be discreet.

“Sergeant Black, a drink?”

“Only if you insist, Superintendent.”

“Oh, but I do.”

“Yes, sir.”

Barlow poured two tall glasses of scotch and
they both savored the flavor before getting down to business.

“I’ve got what seems to be as complete a
list of the bikies, the uh… Dark Knights. The recent recruits, last
few years, are a miserable lot of bottom feeders. If you put the
lot of them in a train station, they couldn’t find the pisser.
There isn’t one of them with the brains god gave a ‘roo. It’s not
that they’re not dangerous, though. Lately, the Knights are picking
up men who’ve crossed the line.”

“What line?”

“Well, sir, the line between bollux and
brains.”

Theodore Barlow chuckled and took a sip.
“Yes, there is a fine line between bollux and brains.”

“Indeed, sir. But these men have crossed it
deeply. Brains are not their claim to fame.”

“What about their upper… their
leadership.”

“Evan McCormick is their president. He has
been for a long time. He’s a sharp man but without the real
ambition required to pull off the jobs we’ve seen lately. They hold
elections from time to time and the ranks move about a bit, but
they haven’t brought in anyone new that we know of. I agree that
they are acting with outside direction, but we cannot determine
precisely who it is.”

“Maybe we need to backtrack. Think about
this. The man who set up Lee Pierce used his wife for the job. If
we can get his wife to tell us who she was working with we have our
brains.”

“That case is closed, sir. If we bring her
in it will need to be for something else. Or we can interview her
away from the usual channels.”

“Set her up. Drop a bag or a gun in her
trunk and bring her in to regional. I want to be there when she is
questioned. No cameras, no lawyers.”

“Yes, sir. When do you want it done?”

“Next Saturday. Work me up a file on her
first, I want it Wednesday morning.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll start that today and get in
touch with the boys in Orange.”

The two men made small talk and drank their
Scotch for a while.

“I can understand why you would think that,
Mr. Troy, but the bottom line is that he is in there under a false
name. He lied about where he was born and everything about his
past.” Henry was calling from out of the country. He had managed to
escape and was making good on the promise for information.

“Henry, why would this man do this? What
possible motivation would the son of a farmer from Molong have for
attacking our business and killing our men?”

“He is not the son of a farmer. He is his
nephew. His father was killed 15 or 16 years ago. Both his parents,
I think, and this man took him in. Check it out, Terry Kingston.
I’ll tell you now, this is the man you’ve wanted by the cods all
this time. Thompson Barber’s the name…”

“Yes. I was introduced to Mr. Barber,” Adam
Troy said.

“He’s been tearing into you all the while,
getting set up with good jobs. As I said, Terry Kingston is his
real name. I stake my life on it.”

“We will look into it, Mr. Cuthbert. I hope
you are enjoying Borneo.”

“Dreadful place full of diseases that real
white men don’t know nothin’ about.”

“The best place to hide in the world is
where nobody wants to go to look for you. Lay in for a while and
we’ll find a position within the transport industry for you.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll be available.”

The connection was cut and Henry Cuthbert
sighed deeply. He was not in Borneo, he was in the Philippines. He
was having anything that was sent to his address in Borneo
forwarded to an accountant who deposited the checks for a small fee
and covered his tracks. He knew the game and would never attempt to
work with the Troys again. There was nothing but a pine box for him
in that direction.

Adam Troy looked pensive for a moment and
picked up the receiver again. He spoke for only a moment and hung
up. Then he called Abel. Abel agreed that despite the dearth of
manpower they were currently experiencing, it was a proper move to
have this Thompson Barber brought in. If Henry Cuthbert was right,
it would stop the vigilante crusade against them. They acknowledged
that Henry Cuthbert might well be lying about the whole thing in an
attempt to divert attention from his own stupidity and thereby save
his own skin. They also agreed that Henry knew too much about the
organization and would need to be killed. He would be drawn back
into the fold with promises of a position in the transport of
southeast Asian heroin and killed quietly. No drawn out torture for
him, he had not been traitorous just stupid, and there was no sense
in bringing him back to Sydney for it. Kill him quietly and sink
him in the ocean.

Then the conversation turned from Henry to
Thompson Barber again. Adam had already put out the word to have
him brought in. Once he was in their custody, he would never leave
alive but they also agreed that there might be some investigation
in order. They thought that it was a good idea to verify what Henry
had told them.

Jimmy Cognac had been unhappy with Thompson
Barber for a short while. Tommy tended to disappear from time to
time without telling anyone where he was going and he was always
vague about his excursions upon return. Jimmy was happy to get the
news that Tommy was to be brought in for “questions.” Very few men
ever survived when there were questions of that sort. The only
disappointment was that he was required to wait a couple of days.
That order was given at the last second. Tommy was to be watched
closely in the interim, however.

Hercules always set out to making a ruckus
when someone pulled in the driveway. Strangers were best advised
not to exit their vehicle until he had been given the command. The
BMW filled with men in suits would not have looked out of place in
Los Angeles or Miami, but it stuck out like a cat at a trout farm
in Ginger Kingston’s driveway. And Hercules did not like it.

Ginger did not get much company and never
had. It was unusual enough to get one of the neighbors stopping in,
let alone some fancy suits. Ginger had a scope trained on them from
the moment they pulled in the drive, but they did not exit the car
and they did not display any weapons. They sat patiently in the
car. Finally, Ginger decided they must have some business with him
other than simply asking for directions.

It got the men’s attention when Hercules
took off running for the pasture. It was even more attention
getting when a large, balding, red headed man tapped on the back
window with a shotgun. Even if they were armed to the teeth, that
shotgun had the entire interior of the vehicle covered. If it were
loaded with slugs, there was a chance one of them might survive,
maybe even two, but there was no telling what sort of load it
held.

The driver’s window slid down and the man
behind the wheel smiled as easily as one might expect. He made his
greeting and asked if Terry Kingston was available. Ginger replied
that there was no Terry Kingston there. Then he asked what business
they had with him. The man told him that there had been an accident
and that they were from an insurance company. They were there to
assess the damage. That shut Ginger’s response down to zero. He did
not want to shoot these four men in the driveway of his own home.
He felt sure that with a five round clip filled with buckshot, and
one in the chamber, he could kill all four of them. He also knew
they were not insurance investigators and that they were probably
armed. Terry was in big trouble. It was obvious that something had
happened and he was on the run.

Once it was plain that they were going to
get nothing out of Ginger, the men in the BMW left. This was one of
the few times in his life that Ginger found himself wanting a
telephone badly. The nearest phone was some way off. Ginger debated
calling Terry for only a minute and then he stuffed a .45 caliber
Smith and Wesson revolver under his arm and a .32 in his waist
band. The shotgun was in the truck with him as he exited his
driveway. The men had driven off toward Orange, Ginger went the
other way, toward Molong.

Wednesday morning the report was delivered
to Theodore Barlow’s desk before he arrived in the morning. It was
just one of a number of reports that he was reviewing that day, so
it took him a while to get to it. When he did, he scanned it
carefully.

Linda Pierce was using her maiden name,
Pettigrew. She had just begun using that name a couple of months
before and had not officially changed it back so there was some
confusion in the file but it was not insurmountable. She had begun
using her maiden name again when she had accepted employment at the
Kingston Agency.

Superintendent Barlow had only recently
begun wearing reading glasses and often left them in his desk
drawer. As he ran across the name of the Kingston Agency, he opened
the drawer and put them on thinking there was some sort of error on
his part. The glasses brought the words into sharper focus and
confirmed that Linda Pierce, under the name Linda Pettigrew was
employed as a secretary. She was employed by the insurance agency
owned by Terry Kingston.

When Superintendent Barlow thought of Terry
Kingston, he saw a frightened and confused eight year old who had
just witnessed the murder of his mother. He could not help
thinking, at the time, that the boy was emotionally disturbed
beyond reason by the event and that he would need some sort of
therapy for the rest of his life. That had been a long time
ago.

It had been a long time since Theodore had
thought of Terry Kingston, but time had not dulled his memory of
the event. He remembered driving out to Molong to visit Terry’s
only living relative though he could not remember the man’s name,
he distinctly remembered the man. He pushed the intercom button and
summoned his secretary into the office. It took her a while to find
the file he was interested in, but once he had it, he was sure of
what he was seeing.

Any good investigator will tell you there is
little coincidence in the real world. Theodore Barlow did not
believe in coincidences of this magnitude. He had already intended
to set Linda up and to apply pressure to her but this changed
things.

“Sergeant Black, you are coming in to work
today,” He said when the man had answered his phone.

“Uh, I’m sorry, Superintendent, I… uh, I’m
not scheduled to work today. I just got home from the night shift
an, uh, an hour or so ago.” Senior Sergeant Randolph Black had
obviously been sleeping.

“I did not ask you if you were reporting to
work or when. I told you that you were reporting and I meant
now.”

“Yes, sir. May I have a moment to get a
shower and a shave?”

“Of course. I expect you to be presentable.
When you see me you will have an undercover car already assigned to
you. It will be filled and ready to go. You will be ready to
drive.”

“Yes, sir. I will be there in short order.
Might I ask where we are headed?”

“We are going to Orange.”

Terry Kingston had not been answering his
phone for two days. He didn’t have the kind of cell phone that
displayed the number of the incoming call. If the message a caller
left was important he would call back, otherwise he could not be
reached. The call from Ginger was urgent, but by the time Terry had
listened to the message, the phone booth it was made from was
empty. The call from Linda Pettigrew did not have the same urgency
of tone but it was, in fact, more telling.

Both messages told Terry that there were men
in suits looking for him and they were disguising their true
business. They were not looking for Thompson Barber, obviously,
they were looking for Terry Kingston.

Since he could not call Ginger, he called
Linda at the agency and asked who it was that came inquiring about
him and where they had said to contact them. This was most telling.
They did not leave an address or professional reference; they had
merely left a telephone number. They had not claimed affiliation
with a business, they had not identified themselves as policemen,
and they were not customers. Two of the men had come into the
office, but Linda had also seen two more in the back seat as they
drove off.