Judgement and Wrath (11 page)

He killed because that was what he was good at.

He killed because it paid him well.

He killed because he had a strict purpose.

The others, those that he personally chose to kill, were merely a by-product of his assumed persona. It didn’t take a talented assassin to drive by a victim, poke a gun out of a window and shoot a man dead as he stepped down from his front porch. Any half-assed idiot with a gun could do that. But such actions quickly got them caught, or killed. Dantalion murdered in a fashion that was more thoughtful, planned to create impact. The style of his killings mimicked the actions of a deranged serial killer, not of a hired assassin. It wasn’t always apparent who his intended victim was. They were lost among the body count. Law enforcement and FBI VICAP teams were scratching their heads, searching for elusive maniacs that would never be identified with him.

Plus, the randomness of the deaths made his clients fear him. It added to his mystery and ensured that his reputation as a master of his craft guaranteed full and prompt payment. No one wanted to chance upsetting him. They knew where that would get them.

Most of his victims were collateral damage. But they served his purpose well. Success bred success. The more he killed, the more often he was sought out. The higher the fee he could set.

He had no reservations about killing those innocents he chose. They were mere props for the theatre of his schemes. Also, he did share the blame around. Everything shouldn’t be ladled on his conscience. He allowed his victims a choice. Who dies first? How do they die? If they pointed the finger at their loved ones, then so be it, it was out of his hands. He was only the tool that completed
their
wishes. It was fucked-up reasoning, he accepted that, but it was a coping mechanism he embraced. It relieved him of the burden of guilt and allowed him to continue doing what he did best.

No, he wasn’t insane.

Crazy men don’t know they are crazy. And neither do they question their actions.

Psychopaths don’t deliberate over death the way he did. They certainly don’t share out the glory. They keep it all to their greedy selves.

Crazy men do sometimes take on personas. But so do hired killers. They never use their real names. Not in a craft that demands anonymity and mystery. Jean-Paul St Pierre wouldn’t bring the clients running to pay high fees for his services. When in his teens he’d shed his old Mississippi beliefs, he’d turned to esoteric books and lore for the incarnation of the professional killer he would become.

In the Book of Enoch he’d found the perfect match. Dantalion, one of the angels cast out of heaven by Gabriel and the army of God. The panoply of the Fallen were numbered. The seventy-first spirit was Dantalion. He was a great and mighty duke of Hell. According to legend, he appeared in the form of a man with many countenances, all men’s and all women’s faces. For one as androgynous as he, and with his talent for disguise, what better physical description could there be? The angel Dantalion was said to know the thoughts of all men and women and carried them in a book; he could change them at will. This modern Dantalion also had the knack for bending people’s resolve and for jotting down the sum of their lives within his own book. He had the power of life and death over them.

Crossing the grasslands, he paused to bring the binoculars to his eyes, looking like every other bird-fancier in the region. Then he casually swung his view past the turreted gate on the Jorgenson estate wall. Near to the shoreline, this gate wasn’t used daily – possibly not even yearly. It was a relic from almost half a century ago, a sally port down to the coast, long before the suspended road had been built nearby. He could imagine the folk from simpler times wandering out of their gardens on to the beach here. Perhaps carrying a picnic basket and a blanket. Maybe Valentin Jorgenson had enjoyed boyhood playtime on this very portion of the beach. Before he was moulded into the successful business man who would continue the legacy started by his own father. Before the cancer that blighted him in his last few months. Before Dantalion put some well-placed rounds through him last night.

A wrought-iron gate barred progress into the grounds. It was in need of a coat of paint, and the corrosive sea winds had turned the gates, and the chain and padlock holding them in place, rusty. A sign was riveted to the wall next to the gate.
NO ENTRY WITHOUT PERMISSION
–
PRIVATE PROPERTY
.

Like that was going to deter Dantalion.

A fortunate occurrence presented itself. A rare snail kite soared through the sky and perched on the wall near to the gate. Dantalion, binoculars fixed to his face, walked closer. Studying, studying. Not the bird. He could see that the lock would be easily shattered by a 9 mm round from his Beretta. He could be inside in seconds.

The bird streaked away. Dantalion wandered away, too.

But he’d be back.

15

‘We’re here to speak to Bradley Jorgenson.’

‘Name?’

‘He doesn’t know my name.’

‘Then he isn’t expecting you?’

‘No, he wouldn’t be.’

‘Then you’ll have to make an appointment through his office. You have the contact details?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Then, I’m afraid you won’t be able to see him. We are currently experiencing unwanted attention from the media and I have express orders to send everyone though Mr Jorgenson’s press office. Good day, sir. Please move your vehicle so it isn’t blocking the access drive.’

The intercom was switched off, the active green light dying. I leaned away from it back into the Porsche and looked across at Rink. His eyebrows jerked but that was the sum of his contribution.

I pressed the buzzer again.

‘Sir, I already told you …’

I didn’t listen to the guard’s words. I swung open the car door and went up to the gate. Peering up at the CCTV camera above it, my hands clenched by my sides, I shouted, ‘Speak to Jorgenson. Tell the ungrateful son of a bitch that Joe Hunter is here. He’d have died last night if it wasn’t for me.’

Turning back to the buzzer on the intercom, I pressed my finger to it. Kept the button depressed. Somewhere on the property the buzzer would be shrieking in protest, probably sending the guard insane.

The tableau held for the best part of two minutes.

Then from within the compound I heard the grumble of approaching engines. Letting go of the buzzer, I said into the speaker, ‘Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

The guard didn’t respond. Maybe he was in one of the two dark silver sedans approaching the gate.

The sedans drew to a halt on the road beyond the gate. Four big guys with guns under their jackets got out. They eyed me coolly, the way a pack of jackals would challenge a lion. Together they could likely bring me down, but not one at a time. Rink got out the car and stood beside me. The odds now tipped the scale firmly in my favour. Rink’s presence often had that effect.

One of the guards, a self-appointed delegate, stepped forwards. He was a man edging fifty years old, but he still retained a hard body and steady eyes. His brush cut indicated he was ex-army as did his straight back and staccato movements.

‘What is your business here?’ he demanded.

‘None of yours,’ I told him.

I wasn’t interested in any of Jorgenson’s hired guns. Looking past the man to the second sedan, I called. ‘You can see me, Bradley. Same guy from last night. You would have died if I wasn’t there. The way I see it, you at least owe me a couple minutes of your time.’

I waited and the man with the brush cut continued giving me dead eyes. After what seemed to be an hour, but was only half a minute, the driver’s window slid open. The driver didn’t say anything. To Brush Cut he just inclined his head in silent communication. Then the second vehicle began reversing up the drive. There was a turning circle twenty paces back and the sedan swung around and back up the road.

‘You’ll have to step back from the gate,’ Brush Cut said.

About to argue, I felt Rink’s fingers brush my wrist. One of the other guards had gone over to a box on a pole. He pressed a button and the huge gates began swinging towards us. We were forced to take a couple of steps back to avoid being swatted aside.

‘Come with us,’ Brush Cut commanded.

‘We’ll bring our own car.’ Rink’s tone said he’d brook no argument.

Brush Cut looked at Rink. Then at me. He sniffed once, then turned away, indicating that the others should get back in the car. Only the man at the gate controls waited.

Back in the Porsche, Rink drove through the gate and past the sedan. He pulled into the turning circle, waited until the gate guard was back in the sedan and it had gone past us. Then we followed.

‘Well, that was easier than we thought,’ I said to Rink.

‘Could be taking us somewhere less public to shoot us,’ Rink said.

We followed the sedan along the road, came to a collection of houses, almost a village community in itself. I thought they must be on-site accommodation for the large number of staff that had to be employed on the estate. At its highest point, Neptune Island was only a few yards above sea level. The ground swelled at its centre then quickly dipped down towards the shoreline. The houses built just above the shoreline were large and impressive, more like the stately homes from back in the UK than any I expected to find on the Florida coast. They were set at intervals of perhaps a quarter-mile apart, like the forts the Roman Empire once built to guard their frontiers.

The sedan angled towards the largest house of all. It would only be about fifty years old, but the architects must have drawn inspiration from Victorian times. A bird’s-eye view would have seen an immense sprawl of red slate roof, shaped like a capital ‘H’. My angle showed me a three-storey wing at either side, attached by a cross section that had windows extending from the roof-line to a yard or so above the ground. The windows were like those seen in cathedrals, but without the coloured glass. Kind of excessive, however much money you had to waste.

The silver sedan I assumed had held Bradley Jorgenson was already there, now empty. The driver was sitting on the hood of his vehicle. His arms were crossed, one hand nonchalantly dipping into the folds of his jacket. A second man stood on the far side, and he was a lot more obvious about the way he held an Uzi sub-machine gun braced across his stomach. The second sedan pulled up next to it, leaving room for Rink’s Porsche between the two of them.

Brush Cut and his three companions climbed out of their vehicle, circling the Porsche like sharks. They were all holding sidearms.

Climbing out ourselves, we were clear on our intentions. Our guns remained out of sight and we showed our empty palms. Brush Cut pointed a Glock 17 at my chest.

‘You can drop the posturing,’ I said to Brush Cut. ‘We’re not here to cause trouble. We’re here to help Jorgenson.’

‘We don’t need any help.’ Brush Cut waved us towards the house with a jerk of his gun. ‘We can handle things.’

Beside me, Rink grumbled to himself. He wasn’t the only one bemoaning how amateur these guys were. What kind of bodyguards allow armed men to bring a vehicle directly up to the house where their principal is in residence? We could have a bomb under the hood for all they knew. Despite their guns, I was pretty sure Rink and I could draw and fire and all six of them would be dead or incapacitated in seconds. Any other time, I imagined Rink would have laughed in Brush Cut’s face. But Rink wasn’t in the best of moods. Neither was I.

‘Where’s Jorgenson?’

‘Inside.’

He made it sound like an order, but that’s where we wanted to be at any rate. We walked quickly towards a large wooden door, causing the others to stumble into a ragged skirmish line behind us. They were like children falling in behind the toughest kids in school.

The door swung open before we reached it and we were greeted by another couple of rent-a-punks. These two were your typical intimidators, men mountains with shaven-heads, broken noses and tattoos on their depressed knuckles. I brushed by them, not intimidated in the least. It’s not guys with smashed-up faces that you have to fear, it’s the unmarked ones; the ones who win all the fights. Sounds a little arrogant, but neither Rink nor I has the face of a second-rate pug.

Jorgenson was waiting for us in a huge room shelved floor-to-ceiling with a library of books to rival a university for knowledge. A cursory glance showed me that most of the titles were in northern European languages. Jorgenson was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk, elbows splayed, his chin resting in his hands. He watched our entry with a look of bored resignation.