Hard to Kill - Debt Collector 4 (A Jack Winchester Thriller) Page 2

  The waiter topped up his cup from a French press. A small amount dripped onto the white tablecloth.

  “My apologies, sir. I will get a new one.”

  Salvatore waved him off. “It’s okay, Alberto.”

  He returned to looking out at the glassy blue sea as sixty-foot schooners bobbed along, and fishermen brought in their nets. He breathed in the salty, warm air while closing his eyes and remembering better days.

  Time seemed to stand still as he wandered through the memories.

  Even when he heard a chair across from him being pulled out he didn’t open his eyes.

  “Good day, Giovanni,” he said softly.

  The aroma of his thin cigar reached his nostrils before he met his gaze.

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “That it has.”

  “How is business?”

  “I can’t complain.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She is well. She passes on her thanks.”

  Giovanni gestured to the waiter and asked him to bring him some coffee. Giovanni was a man who dressed impeccably. He wore only the finest suits, tailored to his huge frame. That morning he was dressed in a tight, black suit, white shirt and red tie. Salvatore’s introduction to him was unlike any other. His mind drifted back to a day he would never forget. Giovanni had been paid handsomely to assassinate Salvatore by a rival member of the Sicilian crime family. He’d made his way through six of Salvatore’s best before he managed to corner him on a boat just off the shore of Palermo. As he kneeled waiting for the bullet to pass through his head, Giovanni had asked him one question.

  “Is it true?”

  “About?”

  “What my mother said. Are you him?”

  He paused then chuckled.

  “The irony. To be shot by my own illegitimate child.”

  There was silence, then the cold metal pressed against the back of his skull was removed.

  Salvatore had met his mother, Carina, in his early twenties. They had a whirlwind relationship only to have it cut short when her father learned about her involvement with him. He hadn’t seen her since then. Almost twenty-five years had passed since that night. While the rumors had reached him, it took Carina another ten before she had the nerve to tell him through a letter that he had a son.

  Over the following years he’d made every effort to ensure that she never went without. She lived in the best area of the city, all her expenses were paid, and in turn she was instructed that his son never be told who he was. She had obviously changed her mind.

  There were very few things that he regretted in his life, but not being there for his son was one of them. The cost of being a part of the Sicilian Mafia was high. Most grew into it by family association. He didn’t want that life for his child. And yet here he was years later looking into the eyes of one of the top hit men in Italy.

  Fast and agile, in a period of nine years he’d notched up more kills than most of the other hit men combined. But it was the killing of seven men in a restaurant in the capital that had finally caught his attention. It was said that he’d entered, ordered some juice, and then without hesitating pulled two Para-Ordnance P18.9’s and opened fire. So much blood was spilled that day, he soon became known as one of the most feared and well-paid hit men in the region.

  The waiter came over and placed a white cup down.

  Salvatore snapped back into the present.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Giovanni said. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  He reached down into a brown leather bag, and pulled out a folder. He slid it across the table to him. Giovanni nursed his coffee, steam spiraling up from it as he opened the folder and looked at the face of Jack Winchester.

  Salvatore could hear him flipping through pages.

  “One man did all of this?”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “No.”

  He continued reading, taking sips of his drink every few minutes. There was a refinement to everything he did. He was clean, exact and Salvatore knew that the job would be done. Over all the years he’d known him, there hadn’t been one hit that had gone wrong. What made him deadly wasn’t the body count. It was that he wasn’t concerned with whether a kill was up close and personal or from one hundred yards. It was all about getting the job done. There was little ego involved.

  “How much are you willing to pay?”

  “Money is not an issue. You will be set up with an account. I want your full attention to be on this.”

  “Do you want him brought to you?”

  “No. Make it clean. I don’t want this to be traced back.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes.” His eyes flitted up. “Make it slow.”

  Chapter Three

  Rain pelted the asphalt turning it into a slick black river. It was the beginning of what would become Hurricane Danielle. It was a little after eleven at night when a black SUV’s gleaming headlights cut through the darkness before coming to a screeching halt a short distance from the emergency entrance to New Orleans East Hospital.

  The rear door opened and a body was thrust into the gutter. She let out a pitiful whimper not just because her head smashed the side of the curb but because she had suffered far worse pain. Bleeding, and only wearing bra and panties, she tried to summon the strength to get up as the SUV sped away splashing dirty water all over her. She coughed and spluttered but could barely manage to lift her head.

  Stunned and still in shock, her body lay in the flow of water that was trying to make its way down one of the many drains. The cold slapped her awake. Her face felt swollen, and the pain between her legs, well it was agonizing.

  Digging deep, she forced herself up onto her knees and crawled up onto the curb. Rolling over on the concrete she lay there staring up at the black sky full of stars. How had it come to this? Did he know about this? Her immediate thoughts went to her child. Was she safe?

  “Ma’am?” a voice said from behind her. She twisted over to see what looked like a security guard. His face widened in horror at the sight of her. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what she looked like. All she felt was excruciating pain.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She tried to mutter the words don’t leave but it came out as garbled noise. Drifting in and out of consciousness she was sure she was going to die. Seconds, minutes, perhaps an hour passed before a crowd appeared at her side. With both eyes badly swollen she could barely make out who they were. Fear gripped her at the thought of her attackers returning.

  “It’s okay. Calm down. We’re medics.”

  Over the course of the next few minutes all she felt was them placing her on a stretcher and then bumping around. Was she being taken to a hospital? Was this just a dream?

  The sound of beeping echoed in her mind as the medics yelled different medical terminology. Nothing made sense. She was certain she would die. Darkness crept in at the sides of her eyes as they wheeled her into the hospital and bright fluorescent lights stung her eyes. A mask covered her mouth and she felt the rush of air fill her lungs. She was able to breathe better but the pain didn’t let up.

  “What have we got?”

  “Security guard found her on his way into work.”

  “Ma’am, can you tell us who did this to you?”

  She muttered a few words, none of them coherent or clear, though to her they made sense. The sound of nurses bustling. The aroma of hand sanitizer. A blue and white curtain running along rails. All of it mixed together like some surreal nightmare that she couldn’t wake from.

  “What is your name?”

  She didn’t reply so they repeated the question.

  Eventually after the third, or perhaps the fourth time, she muttered, “Theresa.”

  “Did anyone get that?”

  They asked again and she repeated it, this time a little louder.

  “Okay, Theresa, do you have any allergies?”

  Again they rambled off medical
terminology, falling back on their training and making sure that she wouldn’t have any reaction to the meds they would pump her body with. Morphine? Fluids? The world around her was beginning to get cloudy. Her mind circled back and forth between the horror of what had occurred, her daughter and then Jack.

  The trill of birds and the sound of shopkeepers opening their stores was the first thing Jack heard that morning. He rolled over, his fingers gripped at the bedsheet. There was a moment in between sleep and being fully awake that felt good, a brief period of time he didn’t remember his life, or the horrors of his past. It was peaceful, a clean slate, a mind absent of wrongdoing. He groaned as he glanced at the clock. It was a little after eight. His head throbbed from the aftermath of alcohol. Pushing back the covers he slid out of bed. The balls of his feet touched the cold, bare tiled floor. He breathed in deeply, letting life flood his lungs and mind. Light seeped through the shades over his windows. Since arriving in New Orleans he had contemplated taking on a job as a driver or in a kitchen, somewhere he could work for money under the table. While he wasn’t desperate for money, his funds were slowly dwindling and he’d eventually have to find a way to put food on the table.

  After taking a piss and splashing water over his face he slid back onto the bed and reached out for his laptop. Without the blinds open, the bright light from the computer stung his pupils. He accessed some of the local news as he did each day. It wasn’t what was going on in the world that was of interest to him, as much as it was the cases that usually would be skimmed over by regular folk. It had become a habit, one that he was sure Eddie would have approved — finding those who needed help, the lost, the overlooked, the ones who fell through the cracks of the justice system.

  The problem was that for all his searching, it was hard to distinguish those who really needed help from those who had brought trouble upon themselves. That’s why a week ago he’d decided to place an ad in craigslist. It was simple and straight to the point.

  Got a problem?

  If the police or lawyers can’t help perhaps I can.

  Call me toll free. There is no obligation and everything will remain private.

  The number that was left in the ad connected to voicemail that he used through a VOIP service. Jack checked in on it twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. It couldn’t be traced back to him and no details about who he was were ever given out in the ad or over the phone when he contacted people. That morning when he accessed his voice messages there was one message.

  Hello?

  Uh, I don’t know how this works or if you can even help but I would like to talk. My name is Judith Frasier. Please call me back.

  She left her phone number. It would be the first time he had replied to an ad. There had been others he’d received that he had just deleted. He wasn’t sure why, perhaps nerves about the unknown. He dialed in the number using the VOIP service and waited.

  “Hello?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “You responded to my ad.”

  Chapter Four

  A month had passed and Special Agent Isabel Baker was no closer to finding Jack Winchester. Daniel Cooper, the special agent she worked with in L.A., was still recovering and wouldn’t be back for at least another month. He had phoned her from the hospital to see if Isabel would be interested in giving him a bed bath. The guy hadn’t lost his sense of humor even with his near-death experience.

  The first few days after getting out of the hospital she had interviewed John Dalton and Deon Smith, and spent a considerable amount of time spinning wheels in Chinatown. None of it had turned up anything. He had simply vanished like a ghost.

  That was until she visited the Greyhound Bus Station on Seventh Street. For days she had worked her way through hours upon hours of footage of people coming and going. The problem with the surveillance was no cameras focused at the area where people paid. There were two cameras that showed people getting on and off buses, that was it.

  Isabel had thought of quitting. Just contacting her superior, Simon Thorpe, and having him take her off the case. It had nearly killed her before and if Detective Frank Banfield was right, the chances of being able to outsmart Jack were low.

  With a cup of coffee in hand she sat in her hotel room going through the security footage. She stared intently as more and more people got on and off buses. There was something about him that bothered her. Why had he not killed her? If he didn’t leave behind anyone that had seen his face, why didn’t he just finish off what Sheng Ping’s men had started?

  She was still lost in thought when she hit the pause button. Hope rose in her heart, then sank. It was a false alert. It really looked like him. The jacket, the height, the color of his hair but it wasn’t. The image of his face was burned in her mind. The way he looked when they confronted him. She ran a hand over her tired face and pressed continue. It was going to be another long day.

  While the grainy video played, showing the two bus bays, her phone rang. It was Cooper.

  “Now I’m not going to wash you, massage you or anything else.”

  He chuckled on the other end of the line.

  “Are you still going through that footage?”

  She yawned. “Yep.”

  “You are wasting your time. That’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. He could have left days, even weeks after.”

  “What do you suppose I do? I have Thorpe breathing down my neck to find him.”

  “Contact Banfield.”

  She shook her head, pausing the video so she could focus on the call.

  “Why would I do that? It’s not like he was a barrel of insights.”

  “Perhaps he knew someone that Jack once knew. Let’s face it. The guy hasn’t lived outside of New York other than when he was in Rockland Cove. Perhaps he has returned to New York.”

  “I don’t think he would be that dumb.”

  “Ask Bundy, he returned to the scene of his crimes.”

  She stifled a laugh. “Cooper, we’re not tracking a serial killer here.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  It was a valid point. He might not have hunted women for pleasure but he certainly had a long list of kills. It made her wonder if he found pleasure in the lives he took?

  “When are you getting out?”

  “Why, you miss me?”

  “Like a dose of Ebola.”

  “Oh, that’s cold,” Cooper replied.

  “No, I could use the extra help. You know, someone to run and do a few errands.”

  “By errands you mean, get you coffee and be your personal bitch.”

  She let out a laugh. “Hey, you said it. But now that you put it that way. Sure.”

  “Listen, if you get a lead, let me know. I am bursting for a reason to get out of this bed. The food sucks here and no one listens.”

  Isabel sat thinking for a few seconds after she got off the phone. Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and went over to her suitcase. She pulled out a case file to get the number of Detective Banfield.

  She hesitated for a moment before phoning. Her last conversation with him didn’t go over too well. She figured he would hang up on her the moment she spoke. The phone rang a few times before he answered.

  “Detective Banfield.”

  “You really should get caller ID.”

  “Shit. Not you again.”

  “Look, I’m not going to take up much of your time.”

  “He got away from you, didn’t he?” Banfield chuckled which only pissed her off.

  “Your admiration of him is rather troubling, detective.”

  “It’s not admiration, agent. Though I do find it amusing. So tell me, how did it happen?”

  “We were ambushed from behind, otherwise your ghost would have been in cuffs.”

  He sighed. “So why are you calling me?”

  “Do you think he might return to New York?”

  “Not if he has any sense.”


  “You wouldn’t harbor a fugitive, would you, detective?”

  “This conversation is over.”

  “Hold on. Look, I just need a break here. Is there anyone he knows outside of New York?”

  “Sorry, but I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Why are you still after him?”

  She breathed in deeply. “To be quite honest, I’m asking myself that.”

  There was a pause as if both of them were contemplating her answer.

  Banfield sighed. “He had girlfriend, a long time ago. Word has it she moved to Louisiana.”

  “Her name?”

  “Theresa Rizzo.”

  “Thank you, detective.”

  “Before you go. Question for you. Have your superiors told you why they want him?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “If they are working in your best interest or their own.”

  She stifled a laugh. The thought had passed through her mind. It was part of the reason she had left the police department and joined the bureau. It was all politics and egos. She thought that things in the FBI would be different — they weren’t.

  Chapter Five

  Billy Dixon had been out of prison only a week when he was scooped up by Tex’s men. He kind of figured they would come knocking, he just thought he would have more time to get things back on track before they did.

  Squished into the back seat with a handgun pointed at him, he stared at the two men keeping an eye on him while the other drove through the streets of Covington, Louisiana. After a few minutes one of them placed a black bag over his head and the rest of the journey he couldn’t see a damn thing. But it didn’t matter, he knew where he was going. He knew who he was going to see. The one person that no one got to see unless they had screwed up.