Honorable Assassin (37 page)

The later message was every bit as
disturbing.

Senior Sergeant Randolph Black wasted no
time in getting to the station. He took the bare minimum of time
getting himself presentable, and after checking out the undercover
car and pulling it into the front parking lot, he joined
Superintendent Barlow. The two of them drove directly out of town
with Randolph saying nothing until they were outside the city
limits.

“I assume, sir, we’re paying a visit to the
widow Pierce?”

“Your assumption is correct, but for her to
be a widow, they would have needed to be married at the time of her
husband’s demise.”

“Fair enough, the ex-Mrs. Pierce. The
question is, what makes her important enough today to get the
Superintendent of the whole province to speak with her
personally?”

“It’s not so much that she is important, it
is that she knows somebody I knew once. Remember, Sergeant, the
same way assumptions will trip you up, coincidences, true
coincidences are rare. What are the odds that Linda Pierce gets a
job working for someone I knew 15 years ago?”

“Oh, I don’t know. That’s a long time, and
Orange is not that large a town.”

Linda’s next message told of a pair of
policemen, plainclothes officers, who were asking to speak to Terry
about an accident in Sydney. Linda included the information that
there was no policy number given and no claims had been filed out
of Sydney for weeks. Linda knew cops, after all she had married
one. She was certain that these were genuine. They had left a
business card. Terry took down the information over the phone while
his mouth hung open in shock. “Superintendent Theodore Barlow” must
be an extremely old man by now. He was not young when he was an
inspector.

It may have been completely innocent, but
Terry doubted that. For Theodore Barlow to visit his business in
Orange the same day as four mob figures could not be a coincidence.
Something had happened.

“Understand me. This Terry Kingston has been
seen in that immediate area within weeks of now. Regardless what
the farmer said, Terry Kingston is there or has been there
recently. I need you to go back to that farm after dark and find
out where he is now. Use whatever means necessary and do not leave
a witness. That is correct.”

Adam Troy hung up the phone with one eye on
the meter they used to check for wire taps. He turned to his
brother and after a sip of brandy, Abel asked him to explain what
it was that he had discovered.

“All right, this begins quite a long time
ago. I don’t think you ever met the Viper, did you?” Adam’s
question was rhetorical. “Well he was quite good at what he did,
and performed some useful functions for us. Of course, you remember
Randy Arganmajc?”

“What do the two have to do with each
other?”

“Arganmajc contracted the Viper to kill
Felix Ribbaldi after Felix went south on us. Well, the Viper killed
Felix for us and then for some reason it appears that Randy
contracted two other men to kill the Viper. They accomplished this
task. One of these men was a sociopath who kept the Viper’s wife
bound in his cellar until he slipped up and she actually killed
him. She beat him to death with a piece from his stove top. The
other man was Bradley, I know you remember him. Well, he went back
and eliminated her from the picture.”

“Bradley died recently, didn’t he?”

“Six or seven years ago.”

“So where does this all go?”

“The Viper’s real name was George
Kingston.”

“Kingston?”

“Yes. The elimination of the woman was
witnessed by two. Bradley was supposed to have taken care of these
two, years ago. He told me he was going to do it and I never
questioned as to whether he had or not. After all, there was no
evidence linking them to us… Except Bradley.”

“And he’s dead?”

“Murdered. In his own home. He was retired.
Hadn’t taken a job in years.”

“And you think the man who witnessed her
contract killed him?”

“Yes, or the boy. I mentioned there were two
witnesses. One of them was the Viper’s son.”

“Aaahh. This was Terry then?”

“Precisely. Terry Kingston, and if Henry is
to be believed, he has been working within our organization for
some time now as Thompson Barber. That is what I get for not
following up on things. I trusted that Bradley would take care of
the situation, and I think he did not. He let it slide until it
jumped up and bit him. It has been biting us ever since.”

Hercules did not bark at cars that did not
pull in the driveway. If they were simply cruising past, they were
ignored. This one was obviously coming in, and it had its lights
off. The barking stopped abruptly. The shot was muffled but the
dog’s yelp was unmistakable. Hercules had just performed his last
labor.

The four men approached the farm house with
care. Looking down the barrel of a shotgun is a sobering position
and none of them wanted to see if the man was ready to use it.
Their prey had been described to them as a tall blond man. They
were also told not to hesitate if they recognized anyone at the
site. The Kingston farm was enemy territory and everybody there
could be considered an enemy.

The farmhouse was quiet and the lights were
off. The old pickup truck was parked in the driveway and the hood
was cold. It looked as though they would catch the residents in
their beds. The men slipped inside quietly and moments later began
blasting away. When the BMW left the Kingston farm, the yellow
corona of the burning farmhouse was visible through the back
windshield.

“Oh, Terry.” Linda’s voice sounded like she
was about to burst into tears. “I just got a call from the police
in Molong. I don’t know how to say this. Your uncle was in the
house last night when it burned to the ground. They want you to
come to the morgue and identify his body. Dear God, I’m so sorry.
I’m sure this has something to do with me. I’m leaving work and
going back to the farm. I’m scared.”

Terry started shaking and hyperventilating.
Despite Linda’s assertion, he knew it had to do, not with her, but
with him. He had been in the shower when she called and by the time
he called her back, she had left the office. She did not carry a
cell phone with her.

Gordon MacMaster did have a cell phone and
was closer to Molong than Terry. The directions were easy to follow
and the address was described with the familiarity of a man who
lived there. Terry needed to know if the farm house was indeed
burned. Terry’s tone told the tale; gone was the cockiness and
confidence he had exuded from the first. It was replaced by fear
and guilt.

The farm house was an old, dry wooden
structure and undoubtedly went up quickly, but he thought that it
may have been an accident never crossed Terry’s mind. He knew with
a certainty that if it had burned, the fire had been set and
Ginger’s death was due to his nephew’s activities. He physically
staggered and sat, naked, on the floor of the hotel room. His long,
drawn out revenge had been an exercise in hubris and the gods were
beginning to take their own revenge.

The fact that Terry was in a hotel and not
his own apartment was not coincidence either. He had noticed that
he was under surveillance. He assumed, as any mob figure would
assume, that the police were monitoring his activities so he gave
his observers the slip and was spending time alone. He had not, in
his confidence, realized that the men performing the clumsy
surveillance were the same ne’er-do-wells he had been consorting
with. He had learned to never answer the phone when he was on the
run and thanked God for the answering service.

The next message that was left was Linda
again. She sounded as upset as she had before or more so. “Terry, I
was followed home from work. There are men watching the farm. I
don’t know who they are, but I’m very frightened.”

Terry called back immediately. “Linda, do
not leave the farm. Load your guns and keep your eyes open. Warn
your family that there are some very bad men and they are looking
for me. I cannot join you right now.”

“Terry, where are you? I need to know where
you are.” Something in Linda’s tone told him that the men she
referred to were closer than she had said.

“I’m at that old fleabag motel in Molong,
but I can be there in a couple of hours. I’ll call you back.”

“Ok. I’ll be here at the farm.”

Terry hung up wondering how he was going to
do that since he had no available vehicle.

The next message was from Jimmy Cognac.
Jimmy had been calling regularly, using a variety of devices to
make Terry think everything was all right. He acted concerned one
time and angry the next. He told of jobs that Terry was missing and
obligations he needed to fulfill. Terry did not return the
calls.

When Gordon MacMaster called it was to tell
Terry that the farm house had indeed burned. The story was in the
newspaper in Orange. One man’s body was found and it was assumed to
be that of Ginger Kingston. The fire was listed as being of
suspicious origin. This call was returned.

“Glasgow?”

“Tarrytown.”

“It’s all turned to a huge shitstorm. They
killed Uncle Ginger. I think somebody is in Linda’s house, trying
to get me to go there. The fucking Superintendent for New South
Wales showed up at the office looking for me in particular.
Somebody is watching my apartment in Sydney; I thought it was the
cops but I’m not so sure now. It was fun while it lasted, but the
game is at an end now. I’m afraid I’m a dead man walking.” Terry’s
voice was shaking with the impact of it all.

“Calm down. We cannot take care of business
in a professional manner if we are overwhelmed with emotion. Call
your friend the bikie, and call in a favor. I have the address of
the farm. If the bikies show up at the farm and take Linda out of
danger, we can be sure it is not they who initiated this. Leave the
men watching the apartment alone. It ties up their resources. I
assume you are not there?”

“No, I’m…”

“I don’t care where you are and I don’t need
to know. There is nothing we can do for the dead, we can only hope
to salvage the living and get out of the country alive.”

“My whole life just blew up in my face,
Glasgow. I no longer care if I live or die. I’m not important. My
life is not important. I don’t know how they found out about all
this, but they have and now I intend to do what I should have done
in the beginning. Instead of playing around, I should have just
gone in and killed the sons-of-bitches and been done with it.”

“Calm down. We can do everything you need to
do, but we must have clear heads to do so. Do not do anything rash.
Call in your favor from the Dark Knights. I’ll be watching for
them.”

Three hours later, a stream of growling
motorcycles poured through Orange and headed up the road to the
Pettigrew farm.

The sheer number of riders precluded any
question that they were going to have their way. They rode up the
driveway and surrounded the front of the house. They were armed in
a variety of ways, but there was no effort made to disguise the
fact.

A man in a business suit came out of the
house, onto the porch and calmly told the mob that they were on
private property, and if they knew what was best for them, they
would be leaving in short order. They did no such thing.

One particularly brutal looking individual
with a disfiguring scar across his nose pulled a sawed-off shotgun
from a custom leather sheath on his bike and strode up the steps.
He stuck the double barrel right in the stranger’s face and
grinned, exposing his rotten teeth.

The man in the business suit did not move a
muscle. He was as cool a customer as you could get, but he also
recognized an untenable position. There was nothing he could
physically do against this crowd, but he also knew better than to
back down too quickly. A show of cowardice would have them abusing
him like a stripper in a cell block.

One short, thin, gothic-looking woman in
tight fitting black leathers dismounted and strode up the steps
like a cat. Very few women rode with any of the gangs unless it was
on the back of a man’s bike, but this club had a number of women
riding. This woman did not have the physical stature needed to hold
her own in a fight against the mountains of testosterone-pumping
flesh around her, but there was something about her that set her
apart. She stalked past the man on the porch without looking at him
and entered the house as if she was in charge.

Inside there were two more men in business
suits and two men in overalls. There was a professional-looking
woman in the downstairs bedroom, looking very anxious. The men in
suits had their hands on their pistols, inside their jackets but
one look through the window was enough to convince them they
wouldn’t get far.

“Give me your cell phones, boys.” The
woman’s voice sounded like chocolate syrup. “Or do I need to call
my friends in?”

The men decided that discretion was the
better part of honor and handed over their devices.

“Now, I need your guns too.” The woman was
smiling.

The two men looked at each other and then
out the door at the men who were beginning to fill up the porch.
Once again their decision was on the side of self preservation
through acquiescence. They handed over their pistols. The woman in
the bedroom came to the doorway, but did not know what to make of
the proceedings. She had never ridden on two wheels.

Two mountainous bikies entered the doorway
and stood on each side of it.

“Hang on boys, I wouldn’t want you to get
hurt,” the leather clad woman purred. She slunk up to the men one
at a time and ran her hands all over their bodies, slowly,
sensuously, looking for hidden weapons. She found a .380 in an
ankle holster on one and a straight razor on the other. She took
delight in the straight razor and smiled demonically as she cut the
off the man’s necktie.