Authors: Martin Bodenham
When he’d finished his coffee, he took the car keys out of the drawer in the corner of the kitchen and selected the key he needed before going through the internal door into the garage. As he turned on the light, the first birds started their morning chorus in the garden. At the back of the garage, next to his lawnmower and garden tools, was a wooden cabinet with a padlock on the front. He kneeled down and used the key to open the lock. Reaching beyond the bottles of weed killer and windshield washer fluid, he felt for the package, which he’d hidden behind a box of Miracle-Gro.
This was the first time he’d taken it out since collecting it from Forstmann Firearms some weeks ago. He un-clicked the special plastic box the salesman had convinced him was essential to protect the weapon from the environment. Not that he would have argued. He’d have bought anything the man had recommended just to get out that shop as quickly as he could.
Michael’s heartbeat increased when he grabbed the revolver and held it in his hands, staring at it. Standing up, he placed the pistol into his suit pocket and then retrieved the box of bullets he’d hidden in the small toolkit on the top shelf above the lawnmower.
When he was back in the house, he put the gun and the ammunition into a gym bag and placed it next to his briefcase by the front door. After putting his empty coffee cup into the dishwasher, he climbed the staircase, trying not to make any noise. When he entered the master bedroom, Caroline moved. He went over to her side of the bed and kissed her on the cheek.
“Are you off?” she said, still half-asleep.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“What time is it?”
“Just coming up to four thirty.”
“My God, that’s the middle of the night.”
“It is for most sensible people.”
“Drive carefully and send me a text to let me know when you get to the office.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
By six o’clock, Michael was at his desk, facing a stack of documents to review. He texted Caroline to let her know he’d arrived at the office, knowing she wouldn’t read it for at least another forty-five minutes.
This morning, he had two meetings in his schedule, both of which he figured would last around an hour, leaving him plenty of time, provided there were no interruptions. Whatever happened, he had to be away from the office by two thirty at the latest.
As it turned out, Michael cleared his workload by one forty-five. On his way out, he said goodbye to Rachel and told her he wouldn’t be back today. If she needed him, she could reach him on his cell phone. Then he stopped at one of the workstations in the open-plan area.
“I’ve been through all these,” Michael said, dropping a mountain of paperwork on the desk next to Towers. “Good work.”
Towers smiled. “Thanks. Once I’ve put your changes through, I’ll get them over to Corton Zander.”
“When you’ve done that, can you see if Steve needs a hand?” Michael pointed to Steve Bradford’s office. “He’s trying to complete the GrafChem deal next week. I don’t need you for a couple of days, but I’m sure he’d appreciate the extra help.”
Having Towers involved in the GrafChem deal would help Michael keep track of its progress and alert him to any hold-ups or other problems. The one thing he had to avoid was for Rondell to rely on the information he’d given him, buy the stock, and then see the deal abort at the eleventh hour. Once Rondell had put money into the stock, he’d be furious if the deal failed to go ahead and the stock price drifted lower, causing a loss. Bradford had seemed confident the transaction was going ahead, but it couldn’t do any harm if Towers was on the inside, keeping an eye on it for him.
Once Michael was in the partners’ car park, he flipped the trunk of the Lexus and placed his briefcase inside. While there, he checked the gym bag to make sure the pistol was still safe. Then he sat in the driver’s seat and turned on the Sat Nav. From his iPhone, he read the address Neil had given him and keyed in the details. The system said it would take an hour for the forty-five-mile trip to Manalapan, New Jersey. Allowing for his stop on the way, he’d be there in plenty of time for his scheduled four o’clock meeting.
The Sat Nav took him south on the New Jersey Turnpike before taking exit nine at Woodbridge, where, a few miles farther on, he picked up US-9 and saw the first signs for Manalapan. Now all he had to find was a place where he could get changed.
A couple of miles south along US-9 was a sign for a Burger King. Michael pulled off the road and drove into Sayreville Plaza, parking the Lexus next to a white pickup. The truck hid his car from anyone who might be watching from inside the restaurant. He slipped off his tie and threw it onto the passenger seat before stepping out and grabbing his gym bag from the trunk. The smell of fried food hit him the moment he entered the building. At the counter, he ordered a regular coffee then sat at a window seat with the bag between his feet. He took one sip of the scalding hot brown liquid before pushing it aside.
When he figured he’d sat there long enough to establish that he was a paying customer, he picked up the bag and headed for the restrooms, where he locked himself inside a cubicle. There were no hooks on the door, so Michael had to place the clothes he took off on top of the wet toilet seat, trying not to think too much about what might be soaking into his wool suit. Minutes later, the suit was folded in the bag, and the pistol, now loaded, was inside the pocket of his fleece, which he wore on top of a pair of jeans and sweatshirt. He cursed himself for not having thought to bring a change of footwear. The black office shoes he was wearing stood out against the rest of his casual gear.
Walking back to the car, he could feel the weight of the gun in his zipped pocket. It was a strange feeling, carrying a deadly weapon so close to his body. He sat inside the locked vehicle and then looked around the car park to make sure no one was watching before double-checking the pistol. While he’d examined it in the restroom, he wanted to make sure the safety was still on.
Chapter 39
O
NCE
A
T
M
ANALAPAN
, Michael took a right onto Symmes Road, where the Sat Nav told him he’d reached his destination. He slowed down and scoured both sides of the street. On his left was an up-market shopping mall. It couldn’t be in there; what he was looking for would be in a low-rent district. The system kept telling him to turn around when possible, but he continued for another quarter of a mile along Symmes. A right spur appeared up ahead and, as he approached it, he could see a couple of parked cars set back from the road, partially hidden by a bank of bushes. Maybe that’s where it was. He swung the Lexus off the main road, and a small strip of shops came into view. This had to be it.
Reversing into one of the parking spaces, Michael counted seven shops. All of them looked like independent stores of one kind or another. The whole row seemed as if it hadn’t been painted since the day it was built in the 1960s. There were only three cars, including his, in the customer parking zone. Evidently, there had been big hopes when the place was constructed. There were spaces for at least thirty customer vehicles. Not exactly a hotbed of commerce. This was the right place, all right.
At the end of the strip where he was parked stood a fishing tackle and bait supplier. In the window was a big red and white sticker that read: LIQUIDATION SALE. Next door to it was a delivery pizza joint, but it was not one of the big name chains. The next two units were empty. Then he spotted the place he was looking for: Ink & Claret—Tattoo Artistry. A knot formed in his stomach.
It was too early to go inside. There were still another twenty minutes to kill, so he cracked open the window for some fresh air and watched the shop from a safe distance. Maybe the person he was here to meet had yet to arrive. Was it wise to be seen waiting for him? He toyed with the idea of returning to the shopping mall to wait in its car park. At least there would be restrooms there, he thought, as his stomach cramps increased.
Could he still go through with this? He’d thought of little else since making the call to Neil, and every thought he’d had about this alerted him more to the risks he was taking. Was it a good thing Neil didn’t actually know the man Michael was about to meet? At best, that made him a contact of a contact of a contact. While the anonymity helped in one sense, it also meant Neil had been unable to vouch for the man directly. Right now, that didn’t provide a lot of comfort. There was still time to pull out. No one would know if he drove away, apart from Neil, and there would be no reason for him to say anything. All the man in the tattoo shop had been told was Michael’s first name, so there was no risk there.
But if he aborted it now, where would that leave him tomorrow and the day after? Things weren’t going to change unless he took some action. If he did nothing, the nightmare would go on forever; well, at least until it ended in disaster. Something had to be done, before it was too late, before anyone discovered he’d been passing on inside information. While he’d already broken the law, so long as that remained undiscovered, he could still get his life back. A year from now, if he had the strength to see things through today, all this would seem a distant memory.
Decision made: it had to be done now, or not at all.
I’m doing this
.
At two minutes to four, Michael reached over to the glove compartment, took out a brown envelope, and placed it into the inside pocket of the fleece. Chewing on his lower lip, he glanced across to the shop again. No one had come or gone since he’d been waiting here. The man he was here to see had to be in there already. He took a deep breath, exhaled loudly through his nose, and jumped out of the Lexus.
The alien buzzing sound of the tattoo gun hit him the moment he pushed the shop door open. A ponytailed man in his late thirties was sitting in a chair with his back to Michael. He was wearing white latex gloves and leaning over the shirtless back of another man. Michael couldn’t see the other man’s face, as he was bent forward with his weight on a vinyl-covered resting beam His muscular arms were a gaudy rainbow, and at the back of his shaven head, running down his neck and between his shoulders, was a tattoo of what looked like a fire-spitting dragon. It took a moment before Ponytail noticed Michael in the giant mirror on the wall in front of the chair.
“You here for a tattoo?” Ponytail said toward Michael’s reflection after killing the gun.
“No. I’m here to see Duane.” Michael spoke in a deliberately less than polished tone.
Ponytail spun his chair round and inspected Michael with a glare that suggested he had a bad smell under his nose. “Is he expecting you?”
“He should be. He said four o’clock.”
Ponytail slid off the chair. “Wait here,” he said before disappearing behind the door at the back of the room. There was a white plastic sign stuck to it: PRIVATE. It looked like it had been put on at an angle. Either that, or the door had sunk at one end. The shaven-headed man in the chair sat up and gave Michael a shit look in the mirror. Michael was tempted to tell the customer the spelling was wrong on his half-finished tattoo, but thought the comment might be lost on him.
What a place
…
A sound of male voices locked in discussion came from the other room, and then a few seconds later, Ponytail came back out. He didn’t look happy.
He motioned with his thumb toward the private door. “He’ll see you…In his office.”
“Thanks.” As Michael walked across the shop, Ponytail switched the gun back on and continued with his artistry.
Some office. The smoke-filled cave consisted of two black leather sofas that took up most of two walls and a small wooden desk in one corner. On the black-painted walls were posters of tattoo work, mostly skulls, gang symbols of various kinds, and semi-naked women covered in ink. Behind the desk was a man in his forties, wearing a white bandana and a baggy white T-shirt. Around his neck hung a long silver chain, at the end of which was a bronze-colored crucifix. The only visible tattoo on his black skin was some sort of military insignia on the back of his right hand. Most of his lower face was covered in thick stubble, but it still failed to hide the scar that seemed to arc from the bottom of his left ear to the edge of his mouth.
“Duane?” Michael asked, his eyes adjusting to the poor light in the windowless room.
“That’s me.” His voice was deep and bad-tempered.
“I’m Michael.”
“I got that much.” Duane pointed the stubble toward one of the sofas tight up against the wall. “Sit.”
Michael sat cross-legged on the near end of the couch. The pistol in his right pocket rubbed against his waist as he leaned into the flaking leather arm. In the background was the constant humming tone of the tattoo machine.
“I don’t make any money when it stops,” Duane said, obviously noticing Michael’s reaction to the constant background noise. He fired up a cigarette and took a few seconds to inspect his visitor. He raised his eyebrows. “Nice shoes. They look expensive.”
“Not really.” What was the right response? It was certainly not meant as a compliment. Either the price had just gone up or the man knew already Michael didn’t belong there—probably both.
“I hear you need someone,” Duane said before Michael could say anything more. He blew out a large smoke circle, and Michael watched as it drifted up to add more staining to the yellow ceiling.