When the urge to get moving takes me I’ve no option but obey. It didn’t matter that I had no firm plan of action in mind, just that there was yet another woman out there fleeing for her life from a maniac. I had to do something. I was sick of running away, or playing catch-up, and it was about time I put Rickard on the back foot for a change.
‘I need some air. I’m coming with you.’
I didn’t argue with Rink. We come from the same school of thought and I knew that he felt exactly the same way as I did.
Harvey stayed behind. He was as good as any analyst that Walter had access to, and would be able to help the CIA men coordinate the search for Rickard from the hotel room. ‘If anything comes up, I’ll call,’ he promised.
We took the Chrysler and went back to the office block from where Ken Wetherby ran his operation. Wetherby wasn’t pleased to see us. His face had swollen where I’d given him the parting shot, but hadn’t begun to bruise yet. Maybe he thought I was going to give him a matching lump on the other side.
‘OK, take it easy, Wetherby. I’m not here for trouble this time.’
The two men that Rink had beaten up were conspicuous by their absence. Probably down at A & E, I assumed. Only the third man, the first to feel a clubbing right from Rink, was there, and he looked no easier than Wetherby did about us showing up again. His hand crept towards a gun in a holster on his hip. Rink gave him a slow shake of his head and the man’s fingers drifted from his gun and dug awkwardly in his trouser pocket.
‘Can we have a little privacy?’ My question was more to spare the young mercenary any further discomfort, and offered him a way out without him losing any more face.
‘You OK with that, sir?’
Wetherby scowled at the young man, then waved him out of the room. When the man was gone, Wetherby grunted. ‘Not as if he was going to be much help anyway.’
‘Like I said, we’re not here for trouble this time.’
Wetherby slumped in the chair behind his desk. I noticed that his papers and laser printer had been returned to their rightful place, but it didn’t look like much work had been done since our last visit.
‘What are you here for, Hunter?’
Propping myself on the corner of his desk, I folded my arms over my chest and looked down at him from a position of dominance. ‘I want your help.’
There was nothing of a request in my voice. Wetherby could refuse my order, but I didn’t think he would.
‘I told you that none of the people on my books were involved. What more do you want from me?’
‘Tell me about Luke Rickard.’
A strobe of emotions flickered across Wetherby’s face. The one that took root was fear. He looked down at his desk, focusing on the untidy pile of documents.
‘Don’t deny that you know him,’ I said. ‘You’d be wasting all our time.’
‘I don’t know him.’ His voice was barely above a whisper. He looked up at me and then across the room to where Rink lounged against a wall. ‘But I know of him.’
‘You tried to recruit him?’
‘I don’t approach people. They come to me.’
‘You came to me,’ I reminded him. It was why I’d come back to clear things up with him. Most of the people on his books were all above board, applicants who were recruited via his website: usually they were soldiers returning from war with no hope of going back to a humdrum civilian lifestyle. After Wetherby put them through a rigorous selection process he sent them off to a training camp that he ran in the Everglades. Those that passed the course were shipped off to be close protection bodyguards to business people or minders to celebrities. But then there were other contracts that Wetherby negotiated — for these he sought and recruited specialists. Basically he was pimping murderers. It was this arm of his business that I’d taken umbrage with.
‘Contrary to what you think, I don’t deal with criminals,’ Wetherby said. ‘When I found out about Rickard, I immediately severed all communication.’
‘He’s that bad?’
‘And then some.’
I shared a glance with Rink. Returning my attention to Wetherby, I asked, ‘So how is it that no one seems to have heard of him?’
‘He’s that good at what he does.’
Imogen Ballard had thwarted him twice, and now so had his wife. ‘So why’s he making all these mistakes all of a sudden?’
‘I can’t begin to imagine why,’ Wetherby said.
‘Tell me about him.’
Wetherby didn’t have to rack his brains very much and I wondered if he’d been considering Rickard as the shooter the first time we were here. If he’d said so then maybe a couple of his men wouldn’t have needed a few days off to recuperate.
‘First off, he’s not really called Luke Rickard. That’s an assumed identity.’
I’d already come to that conclusion. ‘So who is he?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘No idea.’
‘How did you hear about him?’
‘Some of the other men were talking about him. They’d heard stories from out in the field. It seems that Rickard is a freelance assassin who works for those willing to pay the highest fee.’
I thought about a man I’d killed last year. Dantalion: a freak who went by the name of a fallen angel. He had been a freelance assassin too. He didn’t work through the usual channels either.
‘What’s his background?’
‘I’d guess that he was military.’
‘His prints aren’t on record, so that rules that out.’
‘Assuming that he’s an American, you mean?’
He had a point. Both the FBI and CIA had been concentrating on their own databases. I made a mental note to have Harvey cast the net further afield. ‘From what you were able to dig up on him, who are the people he’s worked for in the past?’
‘You know how difficult something like that is to substantiate. I can only tell you about the rumours…’
‘So tell me.’
‘Paramilitary groups mostly. He’s been in Sierra Leone, Darfur, Bosnia, Lebanon and Gaza.’
‘What about closer to home?’
‘Yes, there are rumours that he’s done select work here before.’
‘OK. Next question, Wetherby, and I want the truth. You tried to recruit him. Who was it for?’
‘I can’t disclose any details about my clients. You can’t expect me to do that.’
Rink picks and chooses his time to speak, but when he does his words mean something. ‘Unless you want us to have another falling out, we do.’
Wetherby threw his hands in the air. ‘You realise what my name will mean if this gets out?’
‘Shit?’ Rink asked.
‘Exactly.’ Wetherby ran his hands over his face. He probed the spot where I’d punched him earlier and it was a catalyst for his anger. ‘Why the hell should I tell you anything? I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.’
‘No one will get anything from us,’ I said. ‘You have my word.’
He made a noise in his throat like he was being strangled. The anger went out of him like he was a deflating balloon. With resigned deliberation he leaned down and slid open a drawer in his desk. It was a good place to conceal a gun, but I was at an angle where I could see that wasn’t the case. He pulled out a folder and opened it on his desk.
‘I don’t have a name, just a number. Maybe you have better resources than I do and can trace it.’
That was a given fact but I made him none the wiser. I borrowed a pen and jotted the number on a slip of paper that I pocketed. ‘So what were your feelings?’
‘About what?’
‘About the people who wanted Rickard to work for them?’
Wetherby rolled his head on his shoulders. ‘Like I told you: I don’t use criminals.’
‘But you were happy to make the introductions between the two parties?’
Wetherby’s pause told me that I’d struck a nerve. ‘It will please you to know that I got nothing from the deal. Yes, I put Rickard in touch with them, but that was it. I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
‘Did you know why they wanted him?’
Wetherby sat there straight-faced. ‘No.’
Standing up I looked down at him with a face equally flat. ‘We’ll leave things at that, then.’
‘You didn’t get that from me, right?’ Wetherby nodded at my pocket where I’d slipped the note.
I patted him on the shoulder. ‘As long as we’re good now.’
‘We’re good,’ he said.
Rink came up and dug a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket which he placed on the desk. ‘Buy your guys a beer when they get back from hospital, Wetherby. Forget all about us. Everything will feel so much better afterwards.’
We left him staring at the tip and made our way outside.
‘He’s lying, Rink.’
‘Of course he is. But he’s also a self-serving asshole. I think the phone number’s genuine, though. Why’d you think he gave us it?’
‘My guess? He’s greedy. Like he said, he didn’t get anything from the deal. Maybe this is his way of getting something he wants.’
We’d just made it back to the Chrysler when my mobile phone rang.
Without preamble Harvey gave me an address over in Liberty City. ‘Cops are already on the way there now, so you’d better hurry if you want to get Rickard first.’
Rink drove so I could get the rest of the details.
‘It’s him for sure?’ Over the roar of the engine, I had to shout and Harvey sounded a little breathless in his need to tell me the facts.
‘Without a doubt. Someone murdered a cab driver from the same company that picked up Alisha Rickard from behind the mall. Just before he died the cabbie radioed and asked his co-worker where he’d taken his fare and then that was it. It looks like Rickard has gone after his wife.’
I felt a jolt of adrenalin.
‘OK, Harvey. We’re on our way.’
Rink’s normal mode of transport is his Porsche, and he drives it like a pro. He made no exception behind the wheel of the Chrysler. We blasted across town, hoping to beat the cops heading to the same location. Going for us was the fact that we were good to go while the police would be planning their approach. Directions would be shooting back and forth over the radio as the chain of command was organised. Their orders would be for a covert approach, the area surveilled and then a plan of action drawn up. The Miami Dade Special Response Team would be mobilised, negotiators brought in, the FBI on standby. All of that would take time. In comparison our plan was simple: get there quick and kill Rickard even quicker.