Enough was bleeding enough
.
Dwyer had to admit it to himself. The solo play was over. Dwyer had been inside. He’d brought Banco some Gatorade, a sandwich, fresh bandages. He’d left some simple saline intravenous fluid and tubing. He’d explained he couldn’t get the more therapeutic stuff without a license, and that he was working on it. He’d left him something else too, a last surprise. It was just under the lip of the kitchenette counter. The mobile phone’s internal clock was timed for fifteen minutes. Dwyer planned on being across town, under the shower nozzle in his shite hole by the time everything was finished. He was just leaving, taking his time, sitting in his car for a bit, making sure he’d thought everything through, when the big pro showed up.
Bugger me
, Dwyer thought, another few moments and they would’ve been face-to-face. He watched the big pro go to the door, try something with the buzzer, wait a bit, and then set about letting himself in.
“He’s bumping it,” Dwyer said aloud. It was clear enough to him, even from down the street, what the big pro was doing. He’d seen better, but the bloke wasn’t half bad at it. The man was dogged. He was a hunter.
Dwyer’s anticipation grew as the big pro disappeared inside.
Two for the price of one
, Dwyer thought. His eye went from
building to dashboard clock and back as he waited. And then he heard the muffled
crump
. There was the sound of breaking glass. Smoke appeared from the far side of the building. Then he couldn’t believe his eyes at what he saw next: the big pro giving a fireman’s carry to Banco’s limp body. Dwyer opened the car door and set a foot on the pavement, ready to run straight at him and put two in his dome before he knew what had happened, but then a series of residents made their way, coughing and frightened, out the front door of the building. It was show enough for Dwyer. He put the car into Drive and took off before the police and emergency services arrived to set up a perimeter.
Now, pacing around his room, Dwyer took out his mobile. Going it alone was one thing, but he’d have to be a frigging idiot to go any further so. He dialed a number from memory and waited while it rang, and then he heard the familiar voice come through.
“ ’Ey?” It was his boy, Rickie Powell, a hard Sandhurst chappie and regular hooligan who’d earned his nickname “Ruthless” many times over.
“Oi, Rickie. Dwyer. Where are ya?”
“Waddy, ya fuckin’ Cambrian! On Ibiza.”
“Work?”
“Nah, ’oliday.”
“
Bewt
. Which side?”
“Which side? You think I’m in Ibiza Town with all them rich quiffs? I’m in fucking Sant Antoni, getting smeared on cider and porking fat German chicks.”
“Sorry to interrupt your vital mission, but I’m on a damage-limitation job and could use you to rally up.”
“Fucking ’ell. Can do.”
“Tidy.”
“You’re doing me a big favor. These Bavarian twats can drink their weight in beer, I’m goin’ broke …”
It went on like that for another five minutes before Dwyer snapped to and asked, “Can you come in on a blank, then?”
“Not without flying back to Leeds first. Me blanks are in the safety deposit box at the bloody bank—just have my legitimate passport with me,” Rickie told him.
“Come on straightaway, then, no matter,” Dwyer said. “Go and get yourself packed, we’ve got work to do …”
Behr sat with his back against an ambulance on the dusty lawn in front of the building, coughing out smoke. He’d given his name and brief description of what had transpired, first to the 911 operator when he called in the fire, then again to the first patrolman on the scene. He watched while paramedics and the police and fire departments arrived simultaneously and put out the building fire, which they’d managed to contain to a few neighboring apartments, made sure the residents were safe, and EMS tried to stabilize the shooter. A paramedic gave Behr water and oxygen and cleaned and bandaged the burns on his hands, which were only first and second degree.
He’d
been lucky. The shooter had been far from it. They had him on a stretcher, on his side since his back was so badly burned. One paramedic hung an IV and placed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, while the other worked the radio.
“We’ve got a male—Hispanic, I believe—in his thirties, late or early unknown … Abnormal respiration … We have black nasal and oral discharge … Burns greater than sixty percent of his body … Deep burn pattern … Chemical accelerants …”
The care-giving paramedic spread gauze along the burned man’s back and looked up at his partner. “Christ, I think this guy’s been shot—lower left quadrant. Not too recent either … He’s septic.”
“Probable GSWs, lower left quadrant,” the one on the radio said into the handset.
“Repeat. Did you say GSWs or burns?” a voice came through the radio.
“Yeah, GSWs. Burns also.”
“Shit, he’s shocking,” the one on the ground said. “Pulse two ten, and spiking.”
“Let’s move him, stat,” the radio op said.
“Trying to stabilize him first.”
“Nothing
to
move if we wait, partner.”
“Roger that, let’s roll.”
“He’s hypovolemic, we’re on the move,” the radio man said into the handset.
They used straps to secure him to the gurney and carried it toward the ambulance. Behr got a chance to see the shooter’s face as he went by—his lips grossly swollen, one eye glassy and blank, the other burned shut, the hair on the back of his head gone. Whatever information the man had may as well have been locked away in a Swiss vault. Behr didn’t have much experience with serious burns, but he didn’t see the guy making it.
Behr stood as the ambulance was closed up and did his best to order his scrambled thoughts. He’d tracked down the shooter. The man was for hire, some kind of pro—ex-military, a mercenary—something he didn’t see every day. Someone—his support or handler—had brought in supplies. And someone had firebombed him. Or Behr. Or both of them. He didn’t get much further than that, because as the ambulance sped out, sirens wailing, a dark Crown Vic rolled onto the scene and a familiar, unwelcome figure climbed out. It was Lt. Breslau, chesty and overheated in his suit, his jaw in major pump mode over a lump of gum.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You need further medical treatment?”
“No.”
“Good. What kind of Caro business brings you out into this mess?” Breslau wanted to know.
Behr could only stare him in the face. “Unofficial,” finally came out of his mouth.
“Who’s the well-done slab of meat they just carted away?” Breslau asked.
“José Campos. It’s an alias,” Behr said.
“Great, a spic John Doe to unravel.”
“When that fire’s out, you’re going to find an assault rifle in that apartment. Military. Not jerry-rigged,” Behr said, wondering exactly what the hell he was trying to prove.
“This is about the garage shoot, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Christ. You protected the principal. That’s great, man, well done. Congrat-a-fucking-lations, you did your job. But that’s not enough for you. No, you need to go and find the shooter. Are you on some kind of glory run here?”
“Glory run? What the fuck are you talking about?” Behr said, his blood fizzing with instant anger.
“Can’t let it go. Can’t get off the rush from all the kudos. Gotta prove it out to everyone …”
Behr felt his knuckles straining in tight fists. He wanted to use them.
Breslau gave a half laugh. “You think I’m a douche bag, don’t you? You do—I can see it on your face …”
Though dying to answer, Behr managed to hold off.
“Just know this:
I’m
not the douche bag caught on camera entering a security office in that parking garage.”
Behr thought with disgust of the rent-a-cop who’d obviously reported him. But the disgust went deeper, because wasn’t
he
just a rent-a-cop too? For slightly better wages.
“How the hell’d you even end up here?” Breslau suddenly wondered.
“It’s called investigation,” Behr said, and saw the muscles of Breslau’s jaw freeze. Now the cop was just as angry as him.
“You’re being small-picture here, Behr,” Breslau said, fully squaring on him.
“I am?”
“Yeah. Look, the police, a place like Caro—whatever—they’re all gears in a bigger machine. And you, Behr, you’re sand in the gears. Sand in the fucking gears.”
Behr said nothing. He just stared and choked on the burned gasoline taste in his throat.
“Don’t you think we’ve been looking for the shooter?” Breslau asked.
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing.”
“We’ve been looking for the shooter. We have been. And we were going to find him—”
“Before or after he was barbecued?” Behr shot back, causing Breslau’s volume to triple.
“We were going to find him and lock this thing down! But I’ll tell you this, and I really hope you read me on it. We are
not
in the business of taking a straight-up random shoot, or even an attempted murder beef, and turning it into some unsolvable high-profile conspiracy case. You got me?”
Behr didn’t nod. He didn’t move.
“And believe me, when I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘we.’ As in ‘to the top.’ So mind you don’t head from ‘sand in the gears’ status toward ‘shit on my shoe.’ Because if you end up there, I will scrape you the fuck off.”
Breslau spat on the ground and stalked away toward his car while Behr turned his gaze back to the smoldering apartment building.
Waddy Dwyer was inside the master bedroom, sitting in a plush Ultrasuede chair and admiring the custom-milled woodwork when the shower cut off in the bathroom. He’d had a moment, after coming in through the window, when the water was running, that he could just sit quietly and appreciate the house. Where he was from, where space was at a premium, size and scale said wealth and power. If that perception were the reality here, though, this wanker would be Superman. But it was a lie. That much was clear. Because his initial look over the house told Dwyer that this guy must be auctioning off the furniture for spare cash.
One of the double doors to the bathroom swung open and Gantcher emerged in a puff of steam, wearing only a monogrammed towel around his baggy waist.
“All scrubby-dubby, are we?” Dwyer said, causing Gantcher to freeze, and a wave of gooseflesh to pucker across his skin.
“How’d you get in here?” he said, his mouth flapping. “There are—”
“Two poofs guarding the front, occasionally walking the perimeter,” Dwyer said. “I saw ’em. They didn’t see me.”
Gantcher’s eyes traveled toward the bedroom’s double doors and then back to Dwyer.
“Who tried to get to you today?” Dwyer asked.
“You saw that?”
“Your security stopped him. Who was he?”
“They … they told me his card said Frank Behr. From the Caro Group,” Gantcher said. “They thought he might’ve been … someone else.”
“I know who they thought he was,” Dwyer said, his voice hard. Now he had a name for the big pro.
“What do you want?” Gantcher said too loudly. Dwyer saw what he was trying to do.
“Drop the volume,” he said. “You know what I want.” Dwyer took in Gantcher’s hairless, pink, flabby body. “Look at you there, with your man babbles,” Dwyer said with disgust. “How much steak and lobster, clarified butter, and sweets have you shoveled down your gob, you soft bastard?”
Gantcher didn’t respond, just stood there looking wounded.
“You ought to have some insurance money coming your way about now, righto?”
“The fire,” Gantcher said, confirmation playing on his face. “Holy shit, I had a feeling that was you.”
Dwyer said nothing.
“They’re going to be coming to me now, asking,” Gantcher whined. “
Investigating
. They’ve already called …”
“Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about, ain’t you? Your bloody hands are clean. Now what about it? My money.”
“The thing is, you see,” Gantcher started, “the insurance policies on the development—they were lapsed.”
“The fuck do you mean ‘lapsed’?”
“There was a bookkeeping error. A shortfall. Damn it, I’ll tell you, it’s the same thing I told you before. I’m tapped. My company is tapped. You know how expensive fire, loss, and liability insurance is on a job of that scale? I couldn’t pay the premium, and now …” Actual anger flared in the man and replaced his fear for a moment. “You really dicked me over here, Dwyer. You burned my damn job! How am I supposed to finish—”
“Huck up!” Dwyer said, jumping out of the chair and putting the fear right back into Gantcher. “How the fuck were you
gonna finish the job in the first place, if you couldn’t even pay the insurance?”
“All right, all right,” Gantcher said, backing up, “fair enough.” A moment passed. “So where do we go from here?”
Dwyer took a slip of paper from his pocket and thrust it into Gantcher’s hand. “Wiring instructions. A blind account in the Isle of Man. My name’s not on it. If you don’t want to see me again, have the money in there within forty-eight hours. And hear me on this, you damned jeefe: you
don’t
want to see me again.”
Gantcher nodded, his eyes on the slip of paper. Dwyer headed straight for the bedroom’s grand double doors, pulled a sleeve over the hand that gripped the knob, and headed out and down the stairs. He descended a wide staircase and let his heels ring brazenly against the marble of the vaulted foyer.
Dwyer exited through the front door, like a boulevardier out for a stroll, where he rabbit punched the closer of the two guards in the back of the head. They were the same two lummoxes he’d seen at the casino. On shift for too long—which was something only an amateur would do—they were rendered too tired to be sharp. The man went out and down, straightaway, landing on his face with a crunch that meant new dental work. Dwyer caught the second one, just turning in surprise, around the body and rocked him into a wicked
harai goshi
—a sweeping hip throw—that had him flying through the air briefly before being viciously deposited on the stone steps headfirst. The man’s face and chin took the brunt of the fall. Dwyer was already down the driveway to the street and in his car before they even started to move.