Ghosts, Matt Rogers [reading the story of the .txt] 📗

first.

She was the shot caller, after all.

He dialled.

She answered in half a second.

‘What timing!’ she practically shouted into the receiver.

She was flustered, short for breath.

He couldn’t recall a time he’d ever heard her like this.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he said. ‘Why—?’

‘I should be asking you that,’ she hissed. ‘Where have you been all goddamn day?’

‘I didn’t take the burner phone to work. I thought there was enough heat on me with the whole coke bust thing. I kept thinking the media would see right through it. Turns out they give less of a shit than I thought.’

‘It’s not news,’ Gloria said. ‘You know that. People go to jail for conspiracy to distribute all the time. You think anyone has time to cross-check the deluge? No one was even suspicious of you, and my God did I need you today…’

‘What happened?’ Icke said. ‘What’s Ray shitting himself over? I missed almost as many calls from him.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Gloria said, her tone mocking. ‘Maybe the fact that he’s dead. That might be a factor.’

Icke froze. ‘He’s what?’

‘You heard me.’

‘What have I missed?’

‘So much, Alastair,’ Kerr said. ‘So goddamn much.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m clear,’ she said. ‘I’m heading home and summoning a fucking arsenal of our men to safeguard the perimeter. I’ll be damned if they’re touching my family.’

‘Wait,’ Icke said. ‘Is this about our conversation the other day?’

She hesitated. ‘What?’

‘When I said I wanted Melanie for the night,’ Icke said. ‘And you okayed it. Do you think she’s with me?’

‘What? No. Of course not. You can have her when I say you can. Not a moment sooner.’

He said, ‘I thought that was always the arrangement. So what are you all paranoid about then? Do you know where Melanie is?’

‘I’m sure she’s at home,’ Kerr said. ‘You’re focusing on the wrong things, Alastair. You don’t understand what this is.’

Icke said. ‘What is this?’

‘War,’ Kerr said.

He said, ‘What do you need from me? Do you want to rendezvous?’

‘Now’s not the time for that.’

‘I meant professionally,’ Icke hissed. ‘Your mind’s always in the gutter, isn’t it?’

‘You’re the one who first solicited me,’ she said. ‘Don’t put this on me.’

He said, ‘So what do you need?’

She said, ‘I’m thinking of nuking the operation.’

‘What?’ he said, flummoxed. ‘Why?’

‘There’s a rogue force here in town,’ she said. ‘They’ve demolished Ray, they’ve demolished Gates, and now they’re doing their very best to demolish you and me. I think it’s time to use the failsafe. We shut everything down, we dispose of the product, we erase any trace of our setup, and then I’ll go to the media.’

‘You’ll do what?!’ Icke roared.

Downstairs, his wife let out a muffled sob. He wasn’t sure why.

Misery ran up through the walls.

Kerr said, ‘It’s over, Alastair. At least, this version is. These people kidnapped me today. They stormed into my office, killed two of my heavy hitters and beat the rest of them into submission. I barely escaped tonight. Tomorrow they’ll come back and try again, and I don’t have the resources to resist. But I have surveillance footage from my building of them coming in and holding up the whole place. I can make them Public Enemy Number One if I take the clip to the journalists on my payroll. We plaster their faces all over Vegas, and we sink back into our public personas until the media firestorm either drives them out of town or gets them arrested. Then we start up again, after the heat is off. Comprende?’

He listened.

He soaked it in.

He didn’t like it one bit.

He said, ‘I have manpower. I have the complex in Henderson. Have you forgotten about that?’

She sighed. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘What don’t I understand?’

‘Whatever you’ve got … it’s not enough.’

‘Who are these guys?’

‘I don’t know…’

A pause.

Icke started, ‘I’ll sort out what Ray wants—’

He cut himself off before Kerr followed up with the inevitable. ‘He’s dead, Alastair. Remember?’

‘This is bad,’ Icke said.

‘Yes,’ Kerr said. ‘It is.’

‘The Henderson complex,’ he said. ‘We’re storing a few girls there for the cool down process, remember? I think that Swedish bitch’s daughter is one of them. Are you saying…?’

‘I’m not saying anything.’

‘I’ll get rid of them,’ Icke said. ‘Put them out of their misery and bury them. We need full deniability.’

He sighed and looked around. There was another tin of chewing tobacco on the nightstand. He picked it up, stuffed half the tin into his lower gums until they were overflowing with black sludge, and waited for the nicotine to hit. Kerr waited in dutiful silence on the other end. She knew what he was doing, knew all his vices. This was one of his tamer passions.

When the compound flooded his brain, he basked in it. It silenced all those tricky intrusive thoughts, took his mind off how miserable his family was, how fucked his operation was.

It left only one thought.

The right way forward.

Get rid of them.

I can do that.

He fetched his keys off the nightstand and said, ‘I’ll get right to it.’

Another pause.

‘Hold on,’ Kerr said. ‘Melanie’s calling me.’

‘You take it,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘I’ll call right back.’

The line died.

61

Violetta made Melanie drive.

So she could aim the gun at her and work her phone at the same time.

Melanie pulled tentatively out of the laneway, taking her time to accustom to the bullet-riddled SUV. Her eyes were muddied in the way King and Slater had described from their first night at Wan’s — drenched in mind-altering substances like booze, weed, MDMA, coke, ketamine. Any or all of the above. But she was lucid, and the terror of being abducted had brought her way back down, so Violetta was comfortable she wouldn’t inadvertently crash the car.

Only deliberately.

For good measure Violetta said, ‘Honey, if you even think about veering into oncoming traffic, it won’t change a thing. It’ll only make me pull this trigger faster.’

Melanie was ghost-white.

She said, ‘I’ll behave.’

‘That’s my girl,’ Violetta said.

‘I want to go home,’ Melanie said in a feeble voice, both hands gripping the wheel tight. ‘Please…’

Violetta considered what was waiting for