Honorable Assassin (41 page)

A few miles off, Adam was on the telephone
with his brother. Abel had calmed down after his little flare up
and they spoke civilly to each other. Their conversations had been
a bit strained of late since Abel was a strong advocate of
paramilitary tactics and Adam much preferred a surgical strike. The
Troy brothers had ruled the city for a long time after their
initial takeover without a serious challenge from any sector and
had expanded operations quickly. Their methods were dissimilar, but
they balanced each other well.

“Abel, I regret that I was forced to halt
immediate operations as a result of a tactical diagnosis.”

“Whatever do you mean, brother? I simply
called for the extermination of a very annoying little scorpion. He
has taken up with the Valkierie Motorcycle Club and I took the
logical step in calling for the extermination of them all.”

“But, Abel, I think if we examine the
circumstances, we may discover that there is more to the
arrangement than we imagined. The choice of locations, for
instance. Most of the bikie clubs use kind of a stockyard layout,
you know like a bunkhouse for ranch hands, with the stockade fence.
This club house is an old resort hotel set in the back wall of a
cul-de-sac canyon. It’s a trap. I will not allow men to so much as
enter that canyon. Let me spread a little butter and in a couple of
days we’ll know everything we need to know without the bloodshed.
This Terry Kingston is better than we gave him credit for, but he
is not better than us. Remember, divided we fall. Are you with
me?”

“Of course. I admit, I got a little hot. One
of our best men is dead and three others are missing, ostensibly
kidnapped by the Valkieries. It upset me momentarily and I
over-reacted. Thank you for your attention to logic. I will call
off the assault.”

“I already have, but thank you for your
acquiescence. I will initiate the information gathering program and
keep you in the loop. It would be best to watch the bulk of this
gang, just to determine where they frequent and what they do. I
will use discretion, as bikies are often speed heads and it makes
them jumpy.”

“This man has not shown up at his Sydney
apartment. He also rents a room in Orange but he has not been there
either. He is with the degenerates. He has not only assaulted us,
but he has betrayed us, and I will not stop turning Heaven and
Earth to find him until I hear his screams of agony. And to think,
we had him in the basement once.” Adam could not see that Abel’s
eyes were shining with a kind of madness as he spoke.

Gordon MacMaster was just about to pack up
the microfilm he was scrolling through when a headline caught his
eye. It was from the day in question, the day George Kingston had
been murdered on his yacht. There had been another killing, in the
town of Greenwell Point and a related shooting that had left a man
critically injured. It did not immediately make sense, there was no
evident connection between the two events, but that sort of
coincidence was rare. MacMaster decided to dig a little deeper.

According to the newspaper, Albert Cohen a
prominent jeweler who resided in Greenwell Point, but did not do
business there, was shot through the spine, hospitalizing him in
intensive care. The unfortunate incident happened as three or four
men attempted to rob him at gun point. To his credit, one of the
men never made it out of the neighborhood as the citizen blew his
guts out with a .44 Magnum.

“Have you ever heard of Albert Cohen?”
Gordon asked Terry when he had returned to the hotel room.

Terry replied in the negative but Ginger
started shuffling his feet and looking at the floor. He obviously
had something to say but it was not going to come out by
itself.

“Ginger, are you having a hard time finding
a way to say what you need to say?”

“Ah, I’m just putting together the words.
Why do you ask about Albert?”

“I was doing some research and ran across
his name.”

“Albert and I never got along, even before.
Something in our make-up led us to despise each other, even though
we’re kin.”

“Kin?”

“Aye. Albert is my half brother on my
mother’s side.”

“You mean I have another uncle?” Terry was
leaning over with his palms planted on the table. His face was
getting red and almost looked swollen.

“Aye. Albert Cohen was the first born son of
my dear mother. She had a fling with a man when she was still too
young and gave birth to Albert. From what I understand they had
told Albert his mother had died in childbirth when they took him
into the closed little world of Jewish money and diamonds. He and
George got together in their early twenties and formed some sort of
relationship. I only met him once and saw no reason to meet him
again. We were raised under different circumstances. Me and him, we
would never have got along. It was immediately apparent.”

“Is there any reason you can think of, why
he would have wanted your brother dead?”

“Oh, we got the killers. They’re both
planted in the ground years since.”

“That’s not what I asked. I asked if there
was a reason Albert Cohen wanted George Kingston dead.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“The news, that means probably the police as
well were convinced it was a robbery. Cohen never recovered from
his coma and his obituary is printed a week later. This article was
printed in between however.” Gordon unfolded a sheet of paper from
his pocket and smoothed it out on the table. It read “Man with
Suspected Ties to the Sydney Mafia Hospitalized During
Robbery.”

Terry snorted, “Mafia. There is no fucking
mafia in Australia.”

Ginger ignored his nephew and read the
article word for word. When he was done he said, “I had no idea he
lived in Greenwell Point or I would have made the connection. I
find it unlikely that he would pay to have George killed. It looks
more like George interrupted something he was not supposed to see
and his poor timing cost him his life.”

“I thought he was killed for doing the Felix
Ribbaldi job,” Terry said.

“I think it may have had something to do
with it,” Ginger said thoughtfully. “Look here. Third paragraph
down. ‘Mr. Cohen has reputed ties to the Ribbaldi crime family and
was reported as being on the list of suspects for a money
laundering scheme.’ In case you wonder what that means, it means
Ribbaldi ratted out his boss and Cohen was about to do the same.
That’s why he’s been planted. They probably thought George was
going to do the same.”

“Would he have done that?”

“No. I’m sure that was not where he was
going. I still don’t know why he was there, in Greenwell, but
that’s not important. It was his relationship with Albert that got
him killed. I know it now. I told him he was no good, something
about him smelled bad. But that’s not here.”

“If you look at it,” Gordon said slowly but
with authority. “George may have killed Albert and been killed for
it.”

“I’m thinking no,” Ginger countered. “He was
killed later that day. It takes time to set up this sort of thing.
He was killed right after he left town and he was killed by
professionals who did not know why the man had been targeted. That
means he was a hired hit, not a knee-jerk killing. Someone knew
where he was and where he was going. Terry, what can you tell me
about that day, Mate?”

“My memories are all chaos. I can’t remember
anything clear and what I think I do remember came to me in dreams.
You know I was all fucked up by it. I can’t say if what I remember
is real or a dream. I think we left town in a hurry and I know we
were chased by a speed boat but the Agamemnon was sunk well to the
south so I may be wrong.”

“I’m thinking they sailed the boat south and
then sank it. You probably were chased out of Greenwell and George
was killed there.” Gordon spoke softly, aware that he was treading
on tender old wounds.

“You know what? All this old rubbish is
nothing now. All it means is I have another score to settle with
those steaming piles of shit. I’m tired of playing, I want them
dead.” Terry was starting to get flushed again and a steely resolve
flowed from between his clenched teeth.

~~~

Chapter Seventeen: Assault

“Superintendent Barlow, you are not going to
believe this. I think it may fit well with the series of events you
are interested in.”

“Well, I don’t have all day, Inspector, what
is it.”

“We got an anonymous tip that there was a
body in the dumpster behind this old warehouse on Irving Street.
When the constables got to Irving Street, we find half an army in
the warehouse, dressed to kill and outfitted for the same.”

“Speak plainly Inspector Slaughter. I know
you fancy yourself a poet but I am not a literary critic. Why was
the army in the warehouse?”

“Sir, the men in the warehouse were all
dressed in suits. They were not the army. They were gangsters and
they were all heavily armed. The weapons ran the full slide from
brand new and legal to old pieces from before the license laws.
Some of them were stolen pieces but the guns are not the real
issue.” Chief Inspector Slaughter paused for effect.

“I assume you are going to tell me the real
issue some time before I retire?”

“Yes, sir. The call said there was a body in
the dumpster and there was.”

“A dead body in the dumpster behind the
warehouse on Irving Street where there was an army of gangsters
armed to the teeth. Is that the issue?” Barlow was looking
quizzically at his subordinate with one eyebrow arched.

“Yes, sir. I thought you might like to know
because this sort of set up interests you.” Slaughter was sounding
a bit deflated now.

“And you think this is a set up?” Though it
was obvious, Barlow saw that he was embarrassing the Chief
Inspector and needed to give him a little more string. Slaughter
liked to crow and it seemed best to let him make a little
noise.

“It has to be,” Slaughter continued. “An
anonymous tip that there is a body in a dumpster? The tip comes
when there is a large group of individuals of questionable moral
character? Armed as if they were going to war I might add. It was a
set up. Unless I miss my guess, this is in preparation for
something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, yet. There is nobody left in
town that can possibly be a serious threat to organized crime.
Since the Chinese and Russians went at each other, it’s been
quiet.”

“What about the gang that muscled there way
in there, in the vacuum that the gang war left?”

“Unpredictable at best. It’s almost
impossible to get an informer into the inner circles of these gangs
and they don’t let the recruits, the younger members or the locos
know what is going on.”

“Any word on that woman?”

“No, sir. Ms. Pettigrew has not surfaced. We
have been trying to watch the Valkierie clubhouse, but it’s in a
location that can’t be monitored very well. The old Aerie Hotel.
They just picked this one up a couple of months ago and it looks
like they chose it for tactical advantage.”

“So where are the gangsters being held?”

“We had to split them up because of the
number of them. They wouldn’t fit in the local, so some of them
went to the downtown jail and some to other locals. Oh, I thought
you might like to know that Jimmy Cognac was among those in the
warehouse.”

“And they were taken into custody without
incident?”

“It was actually Jimmy Cognac that prevented
bloodshed. I was not on the scene but the report reads that the
constables were heavily outnumbered and outgunned. If Jimmy had not
kept his head we might be looking at dead officers.”

“Interesting. Bring Mr. Cognac to see me. We
obviously have a similar interest.” When Chief inspector Slaughter
had retired from the room, Barlow called the morgue and left
instructions to bump the autopsy on the dumpster gangster, as he
had been christened, to high priority.

Superintendent Barlow had an hour to wait
before Cognac was delivered to him. In that time, he reviewed the
recording of the anonymous call. He looked up the location of the
warehouse and did a little research on its owners, but did not go
deep enough to discover the connection to the Troy brothers.

“Mr. Cognac, please have a seat.”

Jimmy was rubbing his wrists where the cuffs
had been and was looking around him. He was alone with Barlow in
the sumptuous office of the Superintendent of Police for the entire
Province of New South Wales. Evidently the Superintendent was not
worried about assassination, or at least not worried about Jimmy
Cognac.

“I have some cognac, but I’m afraid it’s not
very good. I prefer scotch myself.”

“Cognac will be fine, no ice.” Jimmy said
suspiciously. His name had doomed him to drinking cognac his entire
life, not that he saw that as a bad thing.

Barlow made a show of pouring his guest a
drink and then poured a scotch for himself. He thought it unlikely
that the long time mob boss would loosen up, especially while in
custody but there was always that possibility. After all, they were
both civilized men.

Cognac drank sparingly as they exchanged
small talk. He was no brash young man to be fooled into thinking he
was anything but a criminal under arrest and being
interrogated.

“Why do you suppose I’ve invited you into my
office this evening?”

“I suppose, that you’ve gotten sick of
talking to ivory tower suck-ups and you need some real
conversation. You could have gone to a pub.”

“I could have but I doubt I would have such
an interesting subject in a pub.”

“So we’re not here to talk about rugby.”

“No, I thought maybe you’d like to explain
the corpse we found in the dumpster behind the warehouse you were
in this afternoon.”

“I dunno. I never saw it before. None of us
put it there. We were on our way out for a hunting party.” Cognac
was clearly not worried about the situation.