Absolution, p.4
Absolution, page 4
part #3 of Joe Logan Series
“Come in, then,” Logan said. “I need to talk to these guys. And give me the gun you’ve got in your pocket. I don’t want anything stupid to happen.”
Andrea handed over the .22 and followed Logan into the room. He closed the door behind them, having to kick it in place against the now splintered jamb. He then turned on the lights and immediately recognized the guy with the walrus mustache as being the passenger in the pickup that had appeared from the desert and headed towards Ajo.
Logan always carried a pocket knife. He severed the cord from one of the lamps, then cut the six foot length in half and bound the wrists and ankles of the other man, before dragging him by the coat collar into the bathroom, where he hit him hard in the temple again, to be sure that he remained unconscious.
Wayne Miller came round with a pounding head. Gathered his thoughts and blinked repeatedly until his blurred vision cleared. He was laid on the carpet facing the side of the bed. The pool of blood that had flowed from his broken nose was still warm against his cheek.
Logan said, “Sit up with your back against the wall. We need to talk.”
Wayne slowly complied, to sit with his legs out straight and his hands palm down on the floor, steadying himself as he looked up to where the man called Logan was sitting on a wooden chair facing him, with his 9 mm pistol pointing at his face.
“Here’s the plan,” Logan said. “You answer every question I ask you. If you refuse, or I think that you’re lying to me, I shoot you in the kneecap, and then if you still play dumb I’ll empty the mag in places that won’t kill you, but will probably make you wish you were dead. Do you understand?”
Wayne nodded.
“Your name?” Logan said.
“Miller…Wayne Miller.”
“And you’re dearly departed friend. Who was he?”
Wayne saw more blood on the carpet a few feet away, and couldn’t see Gary. The big guy had a look in his unblinking gray eyes that he knew was unequivocal.
“You killed him?” Wayne said.
“You came here to kill me, so why are you surprised?” Logan said. “What you need to decide is whether you want to join him or walk away from this, Miller. Who was he?”
“His name was Gary Foley.”
“And you both carried out dirty work for Zack Slater. Right?”
Wayne nodded.
“Why did you kill and mutilate Sam Benton?”
Wayne lifted his right hand off the floor and wiped at sweat that was running down his forehead, through his eyebrows to sting his eyes. “You expect me to admit to murder?” he said.
“I expect you to tell me the truth or die in this room. You know the law. Nothing you say to me at gunpoint would hold up in a courtroom.”
“Shoot the bastard,” Andrea said from where she was now sitting on the far bed.
Wayne turned his head and saw the young woman staring at him with pure hatred in her eyes.
“You want for me to give this lady her gun back?” Logan said.
“No,” Wayne said. “Benton worked for Slater. He used to meet up and pay off guides and contacts in cash. He got greedy and started skimmin’ a few grand here and a few grand there.”
“What contacts?”
“Mainly border patrol officers and cops.”
“Including Sheriff Clay Manders?”
“No. Manders couldn’t be bought.”
“So who told you about me, and where I was?”
“One of Manders’s deputies. Lance Deerbolt.”
Ten minutes later, Logan had all the information he needed about Slater. “We’re leaving now,” he said to Wayne, aiming the gun at his head and pulling the trigger, pleased to see the spreading stain at the man’s crotch and his eyes widen in fear as the loud click signaled that he had made sure that there was no round in the chamber. “Your buddy is in the bathroom taking a nap. But take it as gospel that if either of you two scumbags comes at me again, I’ll kill you both. Do you copy that?”
Wayne nodded and then slumped sideways with a low grunt as Logan leaned forward in the chair and swiped him hard across the side of his head with the silencer of the gun.
“You got a car?” Logan said to Andrea.
“Yes, it’s parked round the corner in the next street.”
Logan put the three handguns in his rucksack along with the cell phones he had found in his attackers’ pockets, and then collected his windbreaker from where he’d hung it in the closet. “So let’s go,” he said. “We need to talk.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Wayne had no idea as to how long he’d been out. He sat up and groaned aloud as bolts of pain shot through his head and face. He turned, put his hands on the top of the bed and levered himself up to his feet, but then had to sit down on it for a minute as dizziness affected his balance. He took deep breaths and watched as drops of blood dripped out from his nose into his lap, and swore aloud to God that he would find Logan and kill him, very slowly. If the ex-cop had had any sense he would not have left him alive. It demonstrated that Logan didn’t have the guts to kill someone in cold blood.
Wayne got to his feet again and went to the bathroom door, to open it and be faced by the sight of Gary sitting in the tub, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. He had a gash on the side of his head, and was still unconscious.
Wayne turned on the shower and waited until the ice-cold water brought Gary back to shivering awareness, then turned it off and unpicked the knots of the cord that bound his partner.
“What the fuck happened?” Gary slurred. “Did you nail the sonofabitch?”
“Do I look as though I did?” Wayne snarled. “Get the fuck out of there and let’s go. The bastard knows everythin’.”
Gary climbed out of the tub and stood bowed over with his hands on his thighs. He felt nauseous. He was suffering from double vision and he thought he may have a mild concussion.
Wayne went back into the room and assessed the position they were in as Gary got his act together. Logan had taken their guns and phones, and had left with a young woman who was obviously pissed with them and had wanted the big stranger to blow him away. What was that all about? And why did Logan give a shit? This wasn’t his business, so what the fuck was he doing poking his nose in where it didn’t belong?
Wayne sat back down on the bed. There was nothing he and Gary could do at the moment. They had no idea where Logan had gone, and were both hurting and unarmed. And worse than that, he would have to phone Zack and tell him what had gone down.
Zack took the call at home. “Yeah Wayne?” he said. “Tell me that you took care of the problem.”
“Sorry, boss, it went south. He was waitin’ for us. Someone must have warned him.”
“Come out to the ranch, now,” Zack said before disconnecting.
Wayne swallowed hard. A part of his brain told him to go back to the car and put as many miles as he could between himself and Ajo. Zack didn’t tolerate failure. The Apache was a psychopath with an evil temper, and was totally unpredictable.
“What’d he say, Wayne?” Gary said.
“He wants us to go out to the ranch,” Wayne said as he racked the motel phone.
“You think we should?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t our fault. Logan knew that we were comin’ for him.”
“He’ll be pissed at us.”
“Shit happens. He’ll probably blow his stack and then calm down and figure out who gave Logan the nod.”
Gary frowned. “The deputy followed him into town and phoned Zack. Who else could it be?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Wayne said. “Lance wouldn’t let us know where he was and then warn him. The guy’s a hobo.”
The Ba’cho ( Eagle ) Ranch was situated on the eastern boundary of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, facing east toward the Gunsight Hills. It was not a working ranch, just a beautiful white two-story house with stately pillars at either side of the main entrance door. It was an almost exact copy of the Southfork Ranch in Dallas, which Zack had always aspired to owning, since watching the TV series as a boy growing up with his widowed mother and her parents in a rundown four room ship-lap house on a reservation, before Bob Parker had married his mother and set up home in Phoenix.
Zack tolerated whites, but had a deep-seated loathing of them in general for how his nation had been treated down the years. His stepfather had been a hard-working guy, but Zack’s ingrained mistrust of whites had been instilled in him by his mother’s father. They were takers, and he had studied their greed for power and money and was now in a position to never have to be subservient to any man, whatever his color or creed. He had learned very early in life that knowledge was the key to real power over others; that and the capability to intimidate and use extreme violence, if necessary, to ensure that people did his bidding.
“Miller and Foley have arrived, boss,” Martin Keno said from the open door to the study, in which Zack was on the Internet checking the balance of one of several encrypted offshore accounts that he used to hide laundered money that he had not paid tax on.
“Show them through to the kitchen,” Zack said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Martin nodded curtly and made his way along the wide hall, dipping his head so as not to catch it on the top of the archway halfway along it. Martin Keno was six foot eight; a full-blooded Apache with a face that could have been carved from the red rocks that his ancestors had lived among for millennia, before the whites had all but driven them from their lands at the back end of the nineteenth century. Martin had the physique of a rangy basketball player. He wore his black hair short, and the gray at the temples made him look older than his forty years. He had known Zack since childhood, and they had become almost inseparable, linked by a similar upbringing, and the fact that neither had any intention of becoming the stereotypical deprived Indians that scraped through life by the skin of their teeth. They had soon acknowledged that crime would be their salvation, and it had been Zack that had been the natural leader, with the acumen to build a small empire by muscling in on the illegal transportation of Mexicans, and then branching out into drugs, prostitution, protection, and any other criminal activities that he thought profitable enough to be involved in.
Martin opened the main door, where he had left Wayne and Gary standing on the flagstone walkway that ran along the frontage of the ranch.
“Go through to the kitchen,” Martin said. “The boss will be with you in a few minutes. And Wayne, your nose is bleeding. Don’t let any drip on the floor, or you get to clean it up.”
Wayne glared up at Martin, before trudging through to the rear of the house holding a crumpled Kleenex to his throbbing nose. Gary followed on behind, his shoulders slumped; scared of what Zack might do to them for fucking up.
It was ten minutes later that Zack ambled into the large dining kitchen and switched on the coffeemaker. Wayne and Gary had been sitting in two of the six carver chairs at the polished maple-topped table, and both of them stood up as he turned to face them.
“You both look like you walked into a moving truck,” Zack said. “Sit down boys, I’ll make the coffee.”
Wayne could hear his heart beating in his ears. He was more than nervous; knew that Zack’s amiable demeanor was like the calm eye of a hurricane.
“So start at the beginning, Wayne,” Zack said as he placed two mugs of coffee on tile coasters in front of the two men. “Don’t skip any details. What the fuck went wrong?”
“Like I said, boss,” Wayne said, his voice a nasal twang, due to the blood clotting in his nostrils. “He was waitin’ for us.”
“I said the beginning,” Zack said, his voice now lower and charged with menace.
Wayne swallowed hard. “We saw him on the street. He went in a diner, so we parked in the side lot, and when he came out he walked back to the motel. We waited for quite a while after the lights in his room went out, then picked the lock and entered. He was ready for us. Just…just took us out.”
“Was he armed?” Zack said.
“Wayne shook his head slowly. Winced at the pain it generated.
“You’re supposed to be pros, and you’re telling me that this no account drifter went up against two armed men and came out on top?”
“He knew we were coming, boss,” Gary said.
Zack’s right hand was a blur. He picked up one of the steaming mugs and threw the contents at Gary.
Gary screamed and cupped his scalded face with his hands as he reared backwards, causing the chair to tip over and deposit him on the tiled floor.
“I was talking to Wayne,” Zack said. “Go and dunk your face in cold water, then find something to mop the floor with.”
As Gary climbed to his feet half-blinded and lurched over to the large enamel cast iron sink, Zack turned his attention back to Wayne. “The deputy, Deerbolt, was the only one that knew where this creep Logan had gone to earth,” he said to Wayne. “And he wouldn’t warn the guy, that wouldn’t make sense. Am I right?”
“Yeah, boss, you’re right,” Wayne said.
“So maybe Logan saw the deputy and was on his guard.”
Wayne nodded.
Zack walked over to the solid marble counter, poured himself a cup of coffee and took a couple of sips. “So what did you tell him, Wayne? And don’t lie to me, or you’ll wish he’d put a bullet through your thick skull.”
“He knew everythin’, boss,” Wayne said. “Asked me why we’d killed Sam Benton for you. I told him that Benton had been rippin’ you off.”
“Keep talking,” Zack said as Wayne dried up.
“He didn’t say much. The broad with him told him to whack me.”
“What broad?”
“I don’t know, boss. I never saw her before tonight.”
“Okay, Wayne. To summarize, this big, tough ex-cop finds Benton’s body in the desert and for some reason decides to make it his business. And he wouldn’t know about me or make a connection unless someone pointed him in the right direction.”
Wayne just nodded. He didn’t want coffee in his face, or worse.
“What you two need to do is redeem yourselves,” Zack continued. “Find out who in Madison Bend spoke to him, apart from the sheriff, and locate the woman and Logan. When you know where they are, we’ll let Martin take care of them. Can you handle that?”
“Yeah, boss.”
“So get the fuck out of here and do it. Call me before noon tomorrow with good news.”
As Wayne and Gary made to leave, Zack’s Nokia trilled. The caller ID was Wayne.
Zack accepted the call. “Yeah,” he said.
“How are the two morons you sent to make my acquaintance?”
“Are you Logan?” Zack said.
“Yeah. I thought you’d like to know that Wayne sang like a canary. I know all about you and your set-up. You won’t find me, or see me coming, Slater, but I’m letting you know that you’re on the clock. The law may not be able to put you away, but I’m not on your payroll, and I don’t let legality get in the way of taking scum like you out.”
“Why have you got involved, Logan?” Zack said.
“I’d planned on moving on in the morning,” Logan said. “But then your guys paid me a visit, and I reassessed the situation and decided to finish what you started.”
“I will find you and the woman, Logan,” Zack said. “And kill you both.”
“I don’t have to find you, Slater. I already know where you are,” Logan said before ending the call.
Zack walked to the front door and opened it for Wayne and Gary. He didn’t say a word as they stepped out into the cool night air that was lit by an almost full moon, just kicked Wayne hard in the crotch, and as the man fell to the ground he kept kicking him; in the head, his face, his stomach and back, and kept up the onslaught as Wayne curled up in a fetal position and moaned, before a final devastating blow from a silver-tipped boot fractured his skull and ended his life.
Gary didn’t move as Zack sat on his haunches and regained his breath. Just stood and waited, and hoped that he was not about to suffer Wayne’s fate.
Martin appeared at the door. “You okay, boss?” he said.
Zack stood up and dusted off his pants. He could feel the droplets of Wayne’s blood that had adhered to and then soaked through the material of his shirt. “I’m fine,” he said. “Get rid of the body, then we’ll talk about how best to find and deal with Logan.”
As if an afterthought, Zack turned to face Gary. “Go home, get yourself cleaned up and be back here at daybreak,” he said. “You’ll be working with Martin now.”
“Right, boss,” Gary said and walked to the car on shaky legs, thankful to still be able to walk at all. He could hardly see out of his left eye, which had been splashed by the red hot coffee, but considered that to still be breathing was a bonus.
CHAPTER SIX
Andrea drove out towards Pisinimo, but stopped at a diner that was still open. Parked in the lot and switched off the lights and engine. Said to Logan, “I need some coffee and to talk.”
“Okay, Andrea,” Logan said.
“Call me Andy,” she said. “Everyone I know does.”
“You don’t know me, Andy. Best thing you could do right now is let me get out, then drive away and put all this behind you.”
“That guy saw me. I won’t be safe until Zack Slater is dealt with.”
“And you think that I’m going to deal with him?”
“Yes. My guess is that you’re here in Ajo because of him.”
“I came here with the intention of getting involved, but decided not to. I was going to head east tomorrow and forget all about it. What happened back at the motel has changed my mind again.”
“Good. People like Slater need to pay for what they do.”
“There always has and always will be lowlife like Slater, Andy. I was a cop. His types are like flies on a hot day. They don’t go away, however many you swat.”
“This is personal,” Andy said. “He had someone I cared for killed. And you said that Sam had been mutilated. What happened to him?”
