Читать книгу Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year - Simon Toyne, Simon Toyne - Страница 20

Mulcahy eased off the highway on to the up ramp of the Best Western.

They were driving through Globe, a mining town that had seen better days and was clinging on in hope that it might see them again.

Javier kissed his teeth with his oversized lips and shook his head at the grey concrete-and-brick motel complex. ‘This it? This the best you could manage?’

Mulcahy drove slowly round the one-way system then swung into a parking bay outside a room he had checked into the previous night under an assumed name. He had avoided all the independents and franchises because he didn’t want some over-attentive owner manager giving him that extra bit of service you didn’t get from the chains. He didn’t want good service and he didn’t want the personal touch, he wanted the impersonal touch and some bored desk clerk on minimum wage who would hand over the room key without glancing up from their phone when he checked in.

He cut the engine and took the keys out of the ignition. ‘Give me five minutes, then follow me inside.’

‘Five minutes? The fuck we got to wait five minutes for?’

‘Because a white guy entering a room on his own, no one notices. A white guy and two Mexicans, everyone notices because it looks like a drug deal is going down and somebody might call the cops.’ He opened his door and felt the dry heat of the day flood in. ‘So give me the five minutes, OK?’

He got out and slammed the door before Javier had a chance to say anything then walked over to a solid grey door with 22 on it. With the engine and air switched off it would become stifling in the car fast. He’d give them maybe three minutes before they followed him in. Three minutes was all he needed.

He unlocked the door and opened it on to a dim, depressing room with two lumpy beds and an old style wooden-clad TV. There was a kitchenette in back leading to a bathroom – the standard layout of pretty much every motel he’d ever stayed in.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, checked the WiFi connection then opened a Skype application, selected ‘Home’ in the contacts and raised it to his ear.

A coffin of an A/C unit rattled noisily beneath the window, moving the grey sheer curtain above it and filling the room with cool air and the smell of mildew. Outside Mulcahy could see the Cherokee with the outline of Javier in the front seat. A dark blue Buick Verano was parked next to it, covered with a fine desert dust that spoke of the miles it had travelled to end up in this nowhere hub of a place. Salesman’s car.

The phone connected and Mulcahy’s own voice told him he wasn’t home. ‘Hey, Pop, if you’re there, pick up.’

He listened. Waited. Nothing. He hung up, found a new contact and dialled.

His old man had driven a Buick when he’d worked the roads, hawking office supplies then pharmaceuticals all over the Midwest. Mulcahy must have been only, what, ten or eleven at the time? Mom had been long gone, so it can’t have been much earlier. His pop would get him to wash and wax the car every Sunday afternoon in exchange for five bucks that had to last him through the week. He would drive him to school in the shiny car on a Monday morning then take off, heading for different states and places that sounded exotic to an eleven-year-old kid who didn’t know any better: Oklahoma City; Des Moines; Shakopee; Omaha; Kansas City. His old man would always come back late on a Friday, pick him up from his aunt’s or, later on when it was clear Mom wasn’t coming back, some girlfriend or other, and the Buick would always be covered in dust, exactly like the Verano parked outside.

The phone connected, his dad’s voice this time. ‘Leave a message. I’ll call you.’

‘Pop, it’s me. Listen, if you’re not at the house then stay away. Don’t go back there for a while, OK? Call me when you get this. Everything’s fine, just … call me.’

He hung up. Everything was not fine. This was not how it was supposed to go. Someone had changed the script and now his father was missing. He checked the time. Tío would be wondering why he hadn’t called. Most likely he already knew. He should have told his father to go on a trip, get him out of the way, in case something like this happened, only Tío’s men would have been watching and they would have grabbed him anyway. About a year back one of Tío’s lieutenants had been turned by the Federales. He’d promised to give them a large shipment and several key players in Tío’s organization in exchange for immunity and a new life. The day before the shipment, the lieutenant had sent all his family away somewhere – and Tío had been watching. The Federales found the lieutenant and his whole family a week later, lined up and headless in a ditch along the border. The message was clear: I am watching. You will be loyal or you will be dead, and so will anyone you hold dear. So Mulcahy had left his father where he was. And now the plane had crashed and he couldn’t get hold of him and everything was fucked and he had to un-fuck it and fast.

Sunlight flashed on the passenger window of the Cherokee as Javier threw it open and escaped from the oven of its interior. He looked furious. Carlos got out too, head down, eyes jumping. They shambled towards the door, doing the most piss-poor impersonation of two people trying not to look suspicious Mulcahy had ever seen. He selected a new contact from the Skype menu and raised the phone back to his ear just as a heavy knock thudded on the other side of it.

‘It’s open,’ he called out and Javier burst in.

‘The fuck’s up with that, leaving us out in the car like a pair of motherfuckin’ dogs?’

The phone clicked as it connected. ‘Tío,’ he said, as calmly as he could manage but loud enough for Javier to hear. ‘It’s Mulcahy.’

Javier stopped dead in the doorway, so suddenly that Carlos bumped into him from behind.

‘There was a problem at the pick-up.’ Mulcahy was looking at Javier but talking into the phone. ‘The plane never showed. We didn’t collect the package. We don’t have your son.’