In Your Name Page 3

  Another concierge opened the ornate glass door and they swaggered into the hotel followed by a gaggle of bellhops carrying assorted luggage. The taller guy removed his sunglasses and scanned the interior. The duty manager swooped into action and accosted his high-spending guest with an over-enthusiastic handshake.

  Mechanic waited until the initial greeting and small talk had subsided then stepped forward, extended her hand and introduced herself.

  ‘Mr Silverton, I’m Jessica Hudson, welcome to Las Vegas.’

  ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms Hudson. This is Mr Walker,’ he said, shaking her hand and pointing to the taller guy in the Stetson. ‘He will be accompanying me on my trip.’

  Walker glowered at Mechanic.

  Silverton and Walker were a sight to behold. The former was a short, stocky man sporting a thin moustache; he was in his late forties, his sweaty face the complexion of putty. The latter was tall, broad and tanned, with a full moustache which reached his chin, Mexican style. He looked like an NFL linebacker dressed in an expensive suit which fitted where it touched. Tufts of dark curly hair protruded from beneath their hats. The two looked like a couple of badly matching bookends.

  Walker was bristling with passive aggression. She surveyed him coolly, it was a look she’d seen many times before. Guys like Walker were common in the forces – absolute world-beaters in the gym but scared little schoolboys pissing in their pants when faced with conflict in the field.

  Mechanic pushed her way into the exuberant conversation between the hotel manager and Silverton. She smiled broadly.

  ‘Sir, do you have time to take me through your plans for your stay? I can suggest a few itinerary items you might like to consider.’

  Silverton waved her away with a podgy hand. ‘Walker knows what to do, have a chat with him.’ He was too busy having a swell time with his new best friend, the hotel duty manager.

  She looked over at Walker. He motioned for her to join him with a wave of his hand and took a street plan from his inside pocket.

  Walker met her halfway and placed his left hand in the small of her back. He shook open the map and walked her to a quiet corner of the reception. Walker pulled Mechanic in close and placed his boot on her foot.

  ‘Now listen, missy, and listen real good,’ he said in a slow southern drawl.

  ‘Silverton doesn’t need extra security. So why don’t you make your excuses, smile sweetly and go back to waiting tables or whatever you do to pay the bills. I told Silverton we don’t need no girl scout.’ He leaned forward stepping hard on her toes. Mechanic didn’t flinch.

  ‘And how did that go?’ she said looking up into his face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you told Silverton he didn’t need extra security, how did that go? Because from where I’m standing it looks like he ignored your good advice, which tells me he doesn’t rate you, Mr Walker.’ She leaned in and sniffed at his lapel. ‘And neither do I, you don’t smell right to me.’

  ‘What the f—’

  ‘You’re wearing a pair of two-hundred-dollar, all-leather shoes – mine have rubber soles. On this marble floor I’d be ten yards ahead of you while you’d still be running on the spot like a cartoon character. Plus mine have steel toecaps, which come in handy when the school bully comes around to stand on your toes.’

  Walker looked down and frowned. Mechanic continued, ‘And those sunglasses in your top pocket are a fully-fashioned item of beauty, Mr Walker. Things of beauty indeed.’ She mimicked his southern drone. ‘The problem is the reflective lenses distort the image, making distances difficult to judge.’ Walker flashed a glance down towards his hundred-dollar shades. ‘That means I doubt you could hit a rolling trash can at thirty yards with those on.’

  Mechanic leaned in again and motioned for him to stoop down. She whispered into his ear. ‘Take a look under the map.’ Walker looked baffled.

  She repeated the instruction, ‘Take a look under the map.’

  Walker moved it away from his body to see Mechanic holding the razor edge of a throwing knife against the front of his pants, the point digging into the fabric.

  He went to move away but Mechanic gripped his elbow. ‘Now I’m thinking, should I take both, or leave you with one. What do you think?’ He swallowed hard. ‘You see, Walker.’ Mechanic sniffed at his lapel. ‘You don’t smell right.’

  She dug the blade in further. ‘For the next three days Mr Silverton has a guardian angel, and that’s me. So, while he is gambling, drinking and screwing himself to a standstill I intend to see he does it in complete safety. Are we clear?’ She jabbed the knife into Walker’s groin, he flinched.

  ‘Now, I’m going to do my job, while you …’ she flicked the knife downwards, ‘… find yourself a new pair of pants.’

  Walker recoiled and thrust her away. He looked down at the two-inch gash in the material, right where he kept the family jewels.

  Mechanic walked back to Silverton smiling broadly.

  ‘Hey,’ he said in a voice slightly too loud, waving his arm in Walker’s direction.

  ‘Great to see you guys are getting along.’

  ‘Yup,’ Mechanic replied. ‘We’re getting along just fine, Mr Silverton, just fine.’

  5

  ‘You were fired?’ Harper asked, not quite understanding what his friend was telling him but finding it funny all the same.

  ‘Nope,’ replied Lucas.

  ‘You resigned?’ Harper had another go.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’m suspended.’

  Harper stifled a laugh. Lucas had the air of a naughty schoolboy telling his mom he had detention.

  ‘Hell man, that’s nothing,’ said Harper dismissing Lucas with a wave of his teaspoon. ‘In my day we used suspensions as a way to give people extra holiday.’

  Lucas and Harper were sitting in their usual café. Lucas hated the place. It had an atmosphere which wrapped you in a hundred wet carpets as soon as you entered and left you stinking of stale smoke and bad personal hygiene. Even a short visit ensured your suit went straight to the dry cleaners or in the trash. At least Lucas wouldn’t need the services of a dry cleaner, since he wasn’t going back to work for a while.

  Lucas continued to air his grievances.

  ‘They took my badge and my gun.’

  ‘I have a gun.’

  ‘Yes you have, and I still have the groove in my head where you shot me.’ Lucas ran his index finger along the furrow above his right ear.

  ‘So apart from getting yourself suspended, how did it go?’ Harper let out a belly laugh and drank the dark sludge from his chipped mug.

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘They were having none of it. They didn’t consider that the envelope and its contents constituted enough hard evidence to restart the enquiry. They point-blank refused to send a team to Louisiana to check it out.’

  ‘Not good then. But that hardly merits a suspension.’

  ‘I think I may have lost my rag and cursed at them.’

  ‘Oh dear, Lieutenant, that will never do.’ Harper was poking fun at his friend’s predicament. ‘So what next?’

  ‘Not sure, what do you think?’ Lucas raised his hand to the guy behind the counter to order a coffee. The guy stared straight at him, and then carried on as though he hadn’t seen him.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  ‘If you mean, am I sure I want to find and kill that murdering bitch? Then the answer is yes. Don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve wanted to take Mechanic down since before you were involved. She cost me everything and there’s nothing I want to see more than her face at the end my gun.’ Harper swigged from the mug, his hand steady. He was still off the booze.

  ‘You asked me what I think,’ Harper continued. ‘I think we should go to Baton Rouge and shake a few trees to see what falls out.’

  Lucas stared at him and eventually said, ‘Do you think they’re right? Would we be on a wild goose chase? Do we want this so much it’s clouding our judgement?’

  ‘What does it feel like?’

  ‘It feels like we have a lead and should follow it up,’ said Lucas.

  Harper returned his stare. ‘If you figure we should go on the basis of that envelope, you’re going to flip out over this.’ He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He flattened it on the table under the dim light. ‘Two weeks after she evaded capture, Mechanic cleared Olivia Dunn’s bank account. You’ll recall this was her false identity at the time of the second set of killings. She withdrew the money in a single cash transaction and left the account open with a zero balance.’

  ‘When did you find this out?’ Lucas was shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘Three days ago, and I’ve had it verified by a guy I know in the bureau.’ The term ‘a guy’ was Harper-speak for the man he occasionally blackmailed for information.

  ‘How come I don’t know about this, damn it,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Because you, my friend, are persona non grata. They keep this stuff from you to stop you going crazy. Let’s be fair, even if you presented them with a fresh set of prints and signed invitation to Mechanic’s house you wouldn’t be allowed back onto the case. They’ve known about this for months and you’re not in the loop any more. Besides, do you think they want to open all that shit back up? The way they screwed up the first case was bad enough, then they send Dr Jo Sells, Mechanic’s twin sister, into the heart of the new investigation – and allow both of them to slip through the net. They don’t want that crap raked up, the press would eat them alive. They want to bury the file and get on with making a hash of something new.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Lucas lolling back in his chair.

/>   Harper glanced up and felt his pain. He knew what he was going through because the force had done the same to him when the first Mechanic case concluded. It drove him to drink and despair. He was determined that Lucas didn’t follow the same path.

  ‘Look at the document.’ He offered it up and Lucas took it. ‘Read it.’

  Lucas scanned the figures and dates and placed it back on the table. ‘So?’

  ‘Look at it again, read the letterhead.’

  Both men stared at each other and smiled.

  ‘So we are going to Baton Rouge after all,’ said Lucas. ‘Because that’s where she drew the money out.’

  6

  Rebecca Moran pulled her car into one of the designated parking lots marked Private. She looked at the two-storey town house in front of her and smiled. The key to the ground-floor flat was no longer with the real-estate people, it was in her bag.

  She checked the rear-view mirror and saw the removals van pass by, closely followed by the Ford sedan containing her mother and father. She cast her eyes to the heavens.

  Moran had to concede she’d been a little naïve to think she would have the day to herself, a day spent moving her stuff into the new place and arranging things the way she wanted. Now she would have her possessions put where her mom thought they should be and spend the rest of the week trying to find them.

  She could have refused their help but it wasn’t worth the trouble. Her mother would pull her ‘I’m so disappointed with you’ face and sulk for weeks. Anyway, she started her new job in the next few days and could do with the help, even if it did result in some corrective activity afterwards.

  Rebecca Moran was a woman in a hurry.

  She had graduated with a first-class law degree and had passed her masters in criminology with flying colours. Her parents were spectacularly proud of their only child and dreamed of her soaring up the corporate ladder as a partner in a top law firm.

  So when she turned up at the family home one day with a letter confirming her job in the police force there was more than a little upset. Rebecca had always wanted to join the police and had made that career choice perfectly plain but her parents didn’t listen. Whenever she said the word policewoman they heard attorney.

  Moran tipped the scales at no more than a hundred and thirty pounds and ate like a horse. Her dark brown hair was cut into a stylish bob and her favourite colour was black: black shirts, black suits, black shoes, black everything, even her underwear drawer was totally devoid of any feminine colours.

  She had a young face with wide eyes and a bright smile. She seldom wore makeup, preferring instead to adopt the ‘I don’t have time for that shit’ approach to female grooming. It obviously did her no harm and the constant stream of male attention confirmed that Rebecca Moran was indeed a good-looking woman.

  Her diminutive stature would often mislead eager male colleagues. She might look like a college kid, but Moran was as tough as they came and fiercely ambitious. She had a competitive streak a mile wide which won her few friends but she couldn’t care less. Life was about winning and coming top. She powered her way through her training at the police academy and graduated top of the class. When she was awarded the prestigious Best New Recruit medal her parents were of course very proud, but deep inside they wanted all this police nonsense to come to an end. They simply wanted their little girl to take up that position in the law for which she was destined.

  She slid the key into the lock and smiled as the door swung open onto the modest hallway. A two-bedroom modern apartment with a spacious living room and through diner, and the best part of all, it was all hers.

  Moran threw herself onto her new leather couch unaware that the focus of her first day at work was being zipped into body bags and taken to the mortuary to await forensic examination. One of the bodies didn’t neatly fit into the heavy duty-bag due to the knurled metal spike protruding from his face.

  7

  Keeping up with Harry Silverton was proving to be a real challenge. For a man who looked like he wouldn’t last the day without having a coronary, he was a ball of mischief and energy. Most high rollers had a certain composure and an aura that said, ‘I don’t have to try, life comes to me’. Harry on the other hand seemed to want everything all at once and was perfectly happy to go get it himself.

  When he arrived at the Hacienda he didn’t go to his suite to freshen up, choosing instead to head straight for the gambling hall. The room was huge, filled with slot machines of every description which filled the place with a resonating cacophony of chiming bells and clattering coins. Running down the centre were the gaming tables and around the outside were the high-stakes rooms filled with green baize tables and attentive croupiers. The low level lighting ensuring the hall remained in a constant state of dusk.

  Most people with the spending power of Harry Silverton would sit in a high-stakes room and let the hotel take care of the rest. But Harry Silverton wasn’t most people. The normal gaming tables were teaming with people from all walks of life, a ready-made audience for him to play with. Mechanic walked five steps behind as Harry buzzed from table to table trying to make up his mind. He shouldered his way through a crowd of punters surrounding a roulette wheel and demanded a chair. Before anyone could protest he was shaking hands and introducing himself as Harry James Silverton III.

  Eventually, a woman who was sitting with her husband watching the game got up and offered him her seat. Harry carved himself enough space with his elbows to sit down. He slid the dealer a billfold of notes big enough to choke a donkey.

  ‘Beer and a JD chaser,’ he called, raising his hand in the air.

  An attractive blonde waitress appeared in seconds, obviously allocated to provide Harry with his every whim. Mechanic watched her work her particular brand of magic. In her purple mini dress with a split to the top of her thigh, and barely enough material to contain her ample chest, she was in for a bumpy ride.

  After a second recount the dealer pushed a wall of chips in front of Harry. ‘Ten thousand dollars, sir.’ The crowd of onlookers gasped in unison. That’s what Harry wanted to hear.

  ‘Hey, thanks for the seat, honey,’ he said, flipping the woman next to him a fifty-dollar chip.

  His drinks arrived and the pretty blonde with the gaping top manoeuvred herself next to him.

  ‘Mr Silverton,’ she said in a Marilyn Monroe voice, ‘your drinks.’ She leaned hard against Harry as though being jostled by the crowd. This enabled her to squash her right breast against his arm. He lifted the JD from the tray and downed it in one, took the beer and left a chip of indeterminate value in its place.

  ‘Same again, sweetheart,’ he said staring down her top. She negotiated her way from the table and considered this was going to be a busy and lucrative shift.

  ‘Here we go!’ Harry shouted and threw a handful of chips onto the green baize. Those around him whooped their appreciation. Harry didn’t get this reaction playing the high-stakes tables. This was what he craved.

  It was at this point that Walker appeared. Mechanic eyed him from across the room noting that his jacket was buttoned all the way to hide the cut in his pants. She beckoned him over.

  ‘Do you do all your own mending?’ she asked. Walker scowled at her and walked away. Mechanic smiled. It was only for three days, she may as well have some fun.

  The next four hours passed uneventfully. Mechanic watched the proceedings from a distance and marvelled at Silverton’s stamina and energy, not to mention his tolerance for alcohol. The pretty blonde Marilyn Monroe waitress was on a constant shuttle back and forth to the bar for drinks and snacks. As Harry made friends with others around the table so the drinks order grew and became more frequent. Despite the tsunami of beers and JD chasers, Marilyn never missed an opportunity to squash herself against Harry, giving him a plunging prevue of what he could be enjoying later. She was a real pro.

  Mechanic sipped her tonic and looked at her watch: quarter after midnight. Harry was still performing with all the energy and enthusiasm of a kid on a high-school bus trip. He’d seen off at least six tables of people yet still managed to maintain a significant crowd of onlookers. The lovely Marilyn kept pace with the constant calls for more drinks and would probably be able to retire on the tips. Mechanic couldn’t work out if Silverton was financially up or down on the evening, all she knew was that he was spending hard, having a blast and was safe.