When the Killing Starts (2 page)

"Pleased to meet you," I said.

She waved at the seat opposite, and I sat, looking at her and waiting for the next move.

"Thank you for seeing me. I understand you're on vacation." She reminded me of an executive with a new employee, gracious but distant.

"Yes," I said.

"Mr. Fulwell told me you were in town with your" She paused, seeking out the least obnoxious way of describing someone else's lover.

"I think 'significant other' is the expression they use today."

She managed a tiny laugh. From the mouth only, saving the wear and tear around her eyes. "I suppose it is," she said. "Has she gone away?"

"She's an actress. She's on location on a movie, out west."

"How exciting," she said, trying not to be condescending. Not my type of woman, no spontaneity.

"She's pleased." I sipped my beer. "You said something about an assignment."

"I hardly know where to start," she said. "I mean, you don't know me or anything about me. This was just an idea I had. I was desperate, but now I feel a little foolish about taking up your time."

"I've got a month before I go back to my job." She did the same automatic smile, a finishing-school smile. I imagined the nuns had given her six out of ten for it.

I sat and waited, and she went on, slowly. "It's about my son." She stopped again, and I waited. This was hard for her; that was all I'd picked out of the impression so far. This was work.

"He's done something foolish," she said.
 

I held up one hand. "I guess Simon, Fulwell, that is, told you I'm a copper, so if your son's done anything illegal, you should be talking to a lawyer, not to me."

She shook her head. Her hair moved all of a piece. It was fascinating to watch. "No, not illegal. Just foolish. Very foolish. Very dangerous." She took a sudden quick gulp of her drink and rushed on. "He's joined a force of mercenaries."

I almost laughed out loud. "Mercenaries? In Canada?" She didn't laugh. "Yes," she said softly. "I didn't know there were any groups like that in this country, but he found one, and he joined it."

There were a lot of questions to ask, but I started with the easy ones. "How old is he?"

"Twenty. But a very immature twenty." She sipped her drink again and waved one hand dismissively. "We're quite wealthy, and Jason is, well, he's spoiled, I suppose. He went to university for a year, and then, when he found it took work, he dropped out and he's been, let's say, trying to find himself ever since. That's almost a year."

I gave her a policeman's response. "You realize that he's of age. Once he's over sixteen in this province, he can do what he likes as long as it's legal. What you say he's done is dumb, but not necessarily illegal."

"Yes, I know that," she said quietly. "I went to the police when I got his note, but they told me what you just said. As long as he isn't involved with some terrorist group, there's nothing they can do for me, or for him."

"Does this group he joined have a name?"
 

"They call themselves Freedom for Hire." Her voice gave the group all its capital letters. "They're run by a man who is, or says he is, a former paratrooper from the British army."

"You're telling me your son put all of this into a farewell letter?" I was frowning at the thought. A twenty-year-old dropout wouldn't go into that kind of detail. Any note he would leave would probably consist of "Screw you."

"No." She shook her head dismissively. "No, but the day he left, the day before yesterday, he came in very late, about two in the morning. I was up at the time, and we had a discussion." She stopped herself and considered the statement. "Well, more of a row, really. He told me he'd been out drinking with some men, real men. They had talked to him about going and training with them, then heading off for somewhere warm to to kick ass. Sorry about the language, but that's what he said."

That's what he would have said. Beer and machismo talking. I'd heard it before, done my share of it, for that matter, as a nineteen-year-old marine on the way to Vietnam. That was before we met the Vietcong. After that, we had stopped making promises we weren't always able to keep.

"Any idea where all this kicking is going to take place?"

"Somewhere warm was all he said." She blinked and swatted at her eyes with the back of her hand. "It could mean Central America, Africa, anywhere. From the way he was talking, he thought he would be fighting ignorant tribesmen or something. But those nations all have professional armies. He's going to get killed."

I sipped my beer and thought for a moment. "Not being personal, Mrs. Michaels, but what does his father say?"
 

"His father is out of the country. In Geneva at the moment, on business. But it wouldn't have made any difference; he and Jason don't get on."

That was part of the answer I needed. We were talking about a sore-assed dropout. It explained the breadth of his gesture, if nothing else.

"Have you told your husband what's happened?"
 

"I called him yesterday. Jason had left the night before; just threw some clothes in a bag and went, left his car in the garage. My husband told me to hire a private detective to trace Jason and persuade him not to go along with this scheme." She was in control again, holding her glass with both hands, staring into it as if it were a crystal ball.

"And have you done that?"

"Of course. I tried, immediately I hung up. I retained a Mr. Broadhurst. His was the first name I came to in the yellow pages. He's a man in his late fifties, I'd say. I just don't think he's capable of following this up the way it should be followed up."

"How so?" I knew what she meant. I just wanted her to spell it out for the record.

She raised one hand and flapped it, a teenager's trick. Something else she'd picked up twenty-five years ago in finishing school, but not from the staff. "I believe these men are dangerous. Potentially, anyway. I don't think Mr. Broadhurst would be forceful enough to persuade them to relinquish their hold, whatever it is, on Jason."

I thought about it for a minute. It was less painful than thinking about a month without Fred in my life. "You said he was going to get trained first. Any idea where?" I knew that there are camps set up in places in the Everglades or the Appalachians where an army could work out without attracting notice. And if this group really was Canadian, there were millions of square miles where they could train without anybody knowing they were there.

"I'm not sure. I don't think he was, either," she said with another synthetic smile. "The only thing was, he was acting so contemptuously about Canada that I got the impression they would be training here. He said that this was a dumb country and people could get away with anything here."

I didn't say anything. We have the liberties and the geography to make that statement true, except for the dumb part. I didn't like the sound of young Michaels.

"Two questions," I said at last. "First, are you sure he's done what he said, or is he just trying to scare you? Second, did your detective make any progress in tracing them?

"Yes. And no. Yes, he left a note, but no, Mr. Broadhurst didn't have any success. At least he hadn't by four o'clock today."

"And is he still looking?"

She looked me square in the face. Her eyes were gray, almost colorless. Since knowing Fred, I'd learned something about theatrical makeup, and I could see that she went heavy on the mascara, trying to take away the chill in her eyes. "He's getting three hundred dollars a day. Yes, he's still looking. But I don't think that's enough."

"What would you expect me to do that was different?"
 

She cleared her throat. "I was hoping you'd apply police techniques to the search. And if you found the men, you would talk to them. From what Mr. Fulwell told me, when you talk, people listen."

Fat chance. Her son wouldn't. He would dismiss me as a washed-up over-thirty copper. He wouldn't know I'd traveled the same road, only legitimately, leaving Canada to join the U.S. Marines. There was a lot of it going on back then, in the late sixties. It was almost fashionable for an angry kid from an ugly mining town in the bush.

"I don't think they will, but what makes you think I'll drop everything and do it? I'm on vacation."

"I can pay you," she said, and although she was still nervous, she was regaining her confidence. Paying was something she was good at. "His safety is very important to me, to his whole family, Mr. Bennett. I could pay you twenty-five thousand dollars."

"That sounds like a lot of money for making a few phone calls and talking to your son. What else did you think this job would entail?" I'm a little old to believe in Santa Claus.

She gave me another of her no-nonsense looks. "I imagine these are hard men. You could run into some arguments or something, perhaps worse."

Perhaps a lot worse, I thought. Perhaps I'd find myself arguing with a bunch of tough ex-SAS men from Britain, and a few automatic weapons as well. I would need a lot more than a golden tongue to get out of that one without having somebody hand me my head.

I sat and considered the offer. Twenty-five thousand was a lot of money, almost as much as Fred stood to make from her movie part. That was its biggest attraction. I didn't want to be the poor partner in our relationship. If I could salt a few dollars away, it would prop up my poor bruised ego. I'm chauvinist when it comes to having my girl earn more than me.

"And if I say I'll do it, when do you plan to pay me?"
 

A man would have said, "Right now," and reached into his pocket. She said, "Would you?" and the tears glinted in those icy eyes.

I said nothing for a moment, still thinking. The job didn't appeal to me. It didn't ring true, and part of me resisted being in debt to this woman. The money meant nothing to her, but once she had paid it out, she would figure she owned me. "I might," I said at last.

She reached out her hand impulsively. It was her left hand, and I caught sight of her wedding ring, a nugget of gold set with big diamonds. She had money and didn't mind people knowing it. "Please say you will." She whispered it. "This means so much to me. Jason is very important to me."

"All right. I'll try," I said.

She reached into her purse. It was on the seat next to her, a battered-looking leather thing that had probably come from Italy and cost a thousand dollars. She dug into it for a moment and came out with a check.

"You had a check already written out?"
 

"Yes," she said, surprised I was asking. Very few people ever said no to her.

"You seem like a woman who's used to getting her own way."

She paused with the check in her hand. Then she tried a little laugh, only it came out sour. "Is that a judgment, Mr. Bennett?"

"An observation. Most people would have waited before putting those kinds of figures on paper."

She shook her head. "Money is just that," she said. "Just figures on pieces of paper. I want my son back. I'd do anything to have that happen." She paused again and looked at me levelly. "Anything," she repeated.

"The money will be sufficient," I said, and dots of white appeared on either side of her nose. She was angry, but she handed me the check. I read it over. Everything was in order. She'd put the proper number of zeros on it, my name was spelled with two Ts.

"Thank you. Consider me hired," I said. "Now let me ask some questions."

We sat and went over everything I could think of. Who were Jason's friends? Where had he gone to school? Had he found himself a steady girlfriend? I was hoping that somewhere in the plush fabric of his life there might be a thread that would lead to where he was, someone he had boasted to, something.

The picture that emerged was of a spoiled, rich loner. No friends of any consequence, girls or boys. No real interests. If he had liked to play trombone or shoot pool or even listen to one kind of music, it might have led me somewhere useful, but there was nothing like that. He had hung around the house most of the time, lying in bed until afternoon, watching TV. At night he had drifted out, she didn't know where. He sounded like an ideal candidate for an outfit like Freedom for Hire, or the Moonies.

"Any idea what your detective has done so far?" I asked.
 

She shook her head. "No, he only said he had been trying to find the group. I'm not sure what that entails." Neither was I. There are some ethical private detectives, but I have a policeman's suspicion of them all. He may have decided to spin out his three yards a day by taking his time, moving so slowly that the boy never did turn up.

"Have you offered him any kind of bonus for finding your son?"

"I was going to, but then I got impatient with his lack of progress and decided to find someone else. That's when I found out about you."

"All right. Now I'm on the case. Do you have a photograph?"

She dug into her purse and brought out a three-by-four-inch color shot. It showed a dark, lean kid whose face looked bland until you realized he had his mother's eyes. They didn't fit with his dark hair, which was overlong and pulled back behind the ears like a foreign movie actor's. He was sitting in the stern of a yacht, a big one. Poor little rich boy.

"How tall is he?"

"Quite tall, five foot ten," she said. "Of course, his father is tall, the same height as you, I'd say."

"And he hasn't changed since this was taken? Not gone punk and died his hair orange, anything like that?"
 

"No, he's cut it a little shorter, it just covers his ears, but that's about it." She was embarrassed at having to discuss the boy with me at all, angry that he wasn't quarterbacking the university football team or curing cancer or any of those wonderful things we expect the next generation to do for us.

I finished my beer, and she pointed to the glass. "Could I get you another?"

"No, thanks. I've got some thinking to do. Maybe next time. Who knows, we might even have something to celebrate."

"I hope so," she said, and her eyes misted again. It was hard to read her. Sometimes the woman broke through the wealth and power.