The Outsider (James Bishop 4) (15 page)

‘Just how long did you work for Hartnell? Was it months? Years?’

‘Look, Bishop, maybe now isn’t the time to get into—’

‘Now’s the perfect time. How long?’

Strickland sighed. ‘Just over ten years.’

‘And what was your role in his organization?’

‘Mostly I was a bagman. You know, collection and delivery, that kind of thing. Usually money. Hartnell liked to call people like me middle management. It was his idea of a joke.’ He looked up at Bishop. ‘You don’t look surprised.’

‘I’m not. When Delaney told me how you supposedly witnessed the murder, the details didn’t really add up for me. It just seemed so unlikely that you’d luck into witnessing the world’s most paranoid man personally executing an undercover cop. I had a feeling there was something missing and now I know what it was. Did she know who you really were?’

‘Yeah, I filled her in when she took over from the previous guy. A few others know too, but not many.’

Bishop wondered if that’s what Delaney had wanted to tell him the night before, outside Strickland’s room. Something else he’d never know. Not that it mattered now.

‘So who’s the guy on the phone?’ he asked.

‘His name’s Dominic Callaway, and he’s been Hartnell’s right hand since forever. I hate to think how many people he’s wasted for his boss, but it’s probably close to three figures. This is not good, Bishop. Not good at all.’

None of it was. And Bishop knew it wasn’t likely to change for the better anytime soon, either. He glanced around as Strickland fidgeted, but they were still alone. Strickland rubbed his forehead with an unsteady hand. Then the phone rang again and Strickland immediately reached down for it and paused. He let it ring twice before answering.

‘You know close you came there?’ the same voice said. ‘I make one call and—’

‘Skip it,’ Strickland said. ‘We both know what’s in store for me, so don’t waste time with pointless threats. Now we either do this my way or I go straight to the men in suits right this minute and nail our friend to the wall two days from now. What’s it to be?’

There was a pause. Then, ‘I’m listening.’

‘Okay. You’re aware I’m not alone?’

‘Yeah, I know. The wild card who came to the party late, right? You listening in, pal?’

Bishop saw nothing to gain by speaking, so he stayed silent. It was usually best.

‘He’s here,’ Strickland said. ‘And what’ll happen is this. We arrange a simple exchange. You get me, he gets my boy, then both sides go their separate ways.’

‘That’s reasonable.’

‘Good. So we just need to agree a time and place. Now I think—’

‘Thursday morning,’ Callaway cut in. ‘Six o’clock. Here in Ohio.’

‘Why do I get the feeling,’ Bishop said, ‘that you had this in mind all along?’

‘Is that you, friend? ’Cause I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m not your friend. Why there?’

‘Well for a start, my employer’s currently unable to set foot out of this state and I know he’d like to keep a close eye on things. And there’s the home advantage factor too. Plus a few other reasons that don’t concern you. But it does mean you’ll need to get your skates on if you want make it in time. Oh, and you’ll need to steer clear of anybody in uniform, but you already know that.’

‘Even if we were to run into them,’ Bishop said, ‘it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything. Your man here can still refuse to say anything on Thursday.’

‘Yeah, and you’ll take my word that we’ll release our bargaining chip the second the thing’s dismissed? Come on, man. I’ll respect your intelligence if you do the same for me. You get grabbed and we’ll assume the worst, and you know what that means.’

‘You’re too smart to cancel him out just like that. You’d at least wait until Thursday and see what happened.’

‘You’re partly right, friend. I
am
smart, but I also work for a man who likes things to happen a certain way. If they don’t he gets angry, almost vengeful. You know, Old Testament-style. And this is how he wants it. I’d like to guarantee the package would be released safe and sound if your pal there decided not to go ahead, but I know my boss. He’d want reimbursement for having to sweat out the past few weeks not knowing what was coming. And with the package so close to hand …? Well, what can I say?’

Strickland didn’t look quite as composed as before. He said, ‘Ohio’s over two thousand miles away.’

‘Gee, is it? So drive. Fly. Take a train. I don’t care which. Just make sure you’re here at dawn on Thursday.’

‘Where, exactly?’ Bishop said.

‘We’ll discuss the exact location later, but it’ll be somewhere west of Columbus. Maybe Greenville, maybe Sidney. Maybe somewhere else. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll call back later so you can speak to the boy, but for now I suggest you get your asses into gear and start making tracks.’

The line went dead. Bishop took the phone and put it back in his pocket. He looked at his watch. It was 10.04. Which left them with just under forty-four hours to get to the meet.

‘How long to drive to Ohio?’ Strickland asked.

Bishop shrugged. ‘Using the main highways? Day and a half, maybe. But we have to figure on more roadblocks between here and there, which means using the back roads for long stretches. So add another half a day at least. That’s if we drive.’

‘But why would the law assume we’re going to Ohio?’

‘The feds won’t assume anything yet, but they’ll figure it out in time. They’re not dummies. I’ve had experiences with them before. Right now they’ll be digging into my background and trying to gauge what my role is in all this. Was I really working for Delaney off the books, or was I in Hartnell’s pocket all along? In which case, was I the one who led the assault team to the house or not? And if I
am
in league with Hartnell, what then? Have I got orders to deliver you to him in person or am I taking you to a pre-planned drop-point? And then there’s Barney. They might figure I brought him along simply as a means to keep you in line. Or maybe I’m working for somebody else altogether. A competitor of Hartnell’s who’s decided you’re worth your weight in gold. See what I mean? Lots of possibilities and they’ll consider them all, then act on the most likely ones. Hell, maybe all of them.’

‘Or maybe they’ll assume you’re exactly who you’re supposed to be.’

One side of Bishop’s mouth turned up. ‘Anything’s possible. But if I’m on the side of the angels, why did I run from the scene of that highway shooting? And why haven’t I turned you and Barney over to the law by now? That’s a big question mark right there.’

‘But that highway shootout can only work
for
us,’ Strickland said. ‘Right? I mean, we were locked in the cage, so you couldn’t possibly have shot the cops. The feds will have to figure Hartnell’s people were behind it and you fought them off with the cops’ weapons. Either that or they pulled us all out from the wreckage and took us with them to wherever.’

‘On what evidence? A few bloodstains and some chunks of glass that could have come from anywhere? Because there’s no other indication of a second car being involved, and no witnesses. And those rear windows aren’t impossible to break out of. I’ve done it before. With enough leverage, I could have kicked it out, reached around for the driver’s gun and killed them both.’

‘Sounds pretty unlikely.’

‘But it’s not impossible, and that’s what counts. Still, whatever they think they’ll have to assume we’re still out on the loose. I know
I
would.’

‘Okay,’ Strickland said. ‘So do we go steal a car, or what? Because I don’t like the idea of getting on a train. If somebody spots us there’s no way off. And flying’s out. They’ll grab us the moment we set foot in an airport.’

Bishop had been thinking along the same lines. ‘Maybe there’s another way,’ he said.

Since Pahrump had no public transportation they had to walk the four miles to the Calveda Meadows Airfield, situated in the north-east section of town. Bishop still remembered how to get there from his previous visit. It wasn’t hard. You just kept on the main Pahrump Valley Road until you got to Belle Vista Avenue on the right, which then led you directly to the private airfield and the private hangars surrounding it. The sky was a clear azure with not a cloud in sight, and Bishop estimated the temperature as somewhere in the early sixties. Which was pretty impressive for early November, even in Nevada.

They were walking along Belle Vista Avenue when Bishop said, ‘Did you have much face-to-face contact with Hartnell?’

‘You kidding?’ Strickland snorted. ‘Nobody gets too close to the Man, except for Callaway, maybe. Hartnell always keeps at least three layers of insulation between himself and everybody who works for him. That’s one of the reasons he’s never seen the inside of a courtroom. I was just one of his many flunkies, that’s all. A well-paid flunky, but nothing more than that. Sometimes I’d have to go and talk to him in person, one on one, but only when a real important matter came up, which wasn’t often.’

‘So what made you decide to testify against him in the first place?’

Strickland paused, then said, ‘My wife, Carrie. It was mostly her who pressured me into it. You never knew her, Bishop, but you’d have liked her. She was always the best part of me, that’s for damn sure. Once I finally admitted to her what I did for a living, instead of leaving me like any normal person she just patiently kept working on me, trying to get me out of the life. She never gave up on me. Never. And there’s Barn too, of course. He also played a big part in turning my head around.’ He sighed. ‘And now my wife’s in the ground and my boy’s in the hands of a couple of major-league psychos. Jesus.’

‘We’ll get him back.’

‘Correction:
you’ll
get him back. In exchange for me. See, that’s why I been so quiet till now, Bishop. It’s a hell of a thing facing up to your own death, and if I know Hartnell like I think I do it’ll be a drawn-out painful one.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Bishop said.

‘Oh yeah, I do. I worked for the man for over ten years and I know how he operates. Callaway wasn’t lying on the phone. Hartnell takes things personally and he likes to inflict pain. Callaway even told me about one time a few years back, when he was ordered to grab a certain street dealer and bring him to this out-of-the-way place where Hartnell was waiting. See, this guy had been mouthing off to everybody about how he’d dated Hartnell’s wife a few times before Hartnell and she had ever met, and what a real freak she was in bed. You know, playing the big man who’s managed to get one over on his boss. So Hartnell decided he was going to personally teach this guy a lesson and just went to work on him. Callaway says he really took his time on the guy, using every kind of blade imaginable. He’d start at nine in the morning, finish at five, then go home to a nice hot dinner and have sex with his wife. Meanwhile, two doctors somehow kept the poor bastard breathing through the night and made sure the flies stayed off him, then Hartnell would come back and do the same thing the next day, while Callaway watched. Callaway said the poor, blind bastard lasted three days before his heart gave out.
Three whole days
. Can you imagine that? God only knows how long I’ll last.’

Bishop said nothing in response. But he already knew a little something of Hartnell’s character, and suspected this story wasn’t an exaggeration. Hartnell was one of those people who were pretty much capable of anything. And now he had Barney in his hands.

Worst-case scenario, all right. The
very
worst.

They carried on walking in silence and it wasn’t long before Bishop saw the first hangar about a hundred feet away on their left. It was completely closed up. Beyond it, running off into the distance, were twenty or thirty more hangars of different shapes and sizes, some old, some new, all either locked up or vacant. Further along on the right Bishop saw several administrative buildings and a couple more, larger, hangars. The last time he’d been out here those last two hangars and one of the administrative buildings had belonged to the flying school. And he knew that just beyond them lay the five-thousand-foot-long runway, running from north to south.

It was very quiet. They were the only things moving, it seemed. There were no planes preparing to take off, no vehicles on the road. Just the two of them, walking.

Five minutes later they came level with the admin buildings. Bishop was pleased to see the building nearest the two hangars had a sign affixed to the side with the words
SAGUARA FLIGHT TRAINING
in large letters. That wasn’t the same name as before so it looked like his old client had since sold it on. Just outside the hangars there were a number of single- and twin-engine aircraft on the ground. Bishop counted five in total, mostly single-prop from the looks of things. Some looked in better shape than others. All could have done with a lick or two of paint. One of the large hangar doors was wide open, but Bishop couldn’t see a single person, inside or out.

Strickland said, ‘Sure looks dead around here.’

‘There’s bound to be somebody still working,’ Bishop said. He turned to the other man. ‘I don’t suppose you got any money on you?’

Strickland made a face. ‘Is that a joke?’

‘Thought I’d ask. Guess we’ll just have to improvise instead. Okay, let’s go.’

They both walked across the uneven field towards the two hangars and the planes. There was no fence or anything to denote boundaries. As they got closer Bishop finally saw a burly male figure exit one of the admin buildings and march towards one of the single-engine planes. The man was wearing a dark polo shirt, tan chinos and sunglasses, and carried a clipboard or folder under his arm.

‘There’s our pigeon,’ Bishop said, and aimed for him.

The pilot reached his plane, glanced briefly at the two men walking his way, then opened the door on the port side and bent down to look at something. It took Bishop and Strickland another minute before they reached him. Up close, Bishop saw the guy was probably in his mid- to late forties. He had a heavily lined face, and short brown hair that was thin at the back and greying at the temples. The aircraft he was working on was a single-prop Cessna. Possibly a Skyhawk. Bishop saw two front seats and two more in the back.