A Time For Justice (25 page)

With that he turned and walked out.

In the hospital foyer his heart dropped as he saw the waiting,
predatory figure of Lisa Want, accompanied by a photographer. The
camera flashed a dozen times.

Then Lisa Want swooped on him like an osprey on a fish. Her
portable tape-recorder was running.

‘
How is she, Joe?’

Kovaks stopped dead and opened his hands wide as if to say,
‘Got me.’

He looked levelly at her, then said, ‘If you don’t get out of
my way, Ms Want, I’ll break that fuckin’ tape-recorder over your
head and shove the batteries right up your pretty little ass - and
you can quote me.’ He shoved past her.

Unfazed, she persisted. ‘Agent Kovaks, is it true that you
also received a letter bomb, which failed to explode?’

No reply. It was true, of course. But how the hell did she
know? ‘Is it also true that it was wired not
to explode?’

No reply. But also true. According to the bomb disposal expert
who’d defused the device, it was a real live bomb but wired
purposely not to detonate. Its sole purpose, therefore, was to
frighten its recipient. But again, how the hell did she know? The
office had decided that news of this package would not be released
to the media, so who had told her?

‘
Why do you think you received the bomb? Is someone warning or
threatening you to keep off a case? Is this all connected with your
ongoing investigation into the Corelli crime family? How do you
feel?
Are
you
intimidated? Has Chrissy regained consciousness yet? Can we get in
for a photograph of her? How is your investigation progressing? Are
you going to answer any of these fucking questions or not? Come on,
Joe, give me something!’

Kovaks paused at the door. ‘Turn that off,’ he said, pointing
to the tape-recorder.

Meekly, she obliged.

‘
It’s quite obvious to me that you’ve already been given
something, Lisa. Some of the questions you’ve asked indicate to me
that someone ill the FBI office in Miami is feeding you stuff you
shouldn’t know. I haven’t a clue who it is and I don’t think you’ll
tell me’ - here she opened her mouth to protest - ‘no, don’t
speak,’ he ordered her. ‘Let me finish. I know you’ll deny it and
that’s fair enough, but I’ll tell you this: when I find out who it
is, whoever it is, regardless of rank, gender, race, length of
service, length of penis, whatever, whoever - when I find them,
they’ll wish they’d never been born, never joined the FBI, never
fucked you. Their feet won’t touch the fuckin’ ground - and nor
will yours, because I’ll
go for your
throat too and you’ll be before a court faster than you come. Now,
if you want to turn that machine back on, I’ll
give you a comment.’

Speechless, she pressed the record buttons.

‘
No comment,’ he said, smiled, turned and walked out of the
hospital.

Kovaks drove home in a bleak, black mood. He hit the bottle
and his mood became darker and deadlier. How could he prove that
Corelli was the man behind the bombs? The simple answer was that he
couldn’t. It wasn’t as though Corelli, or even one of his hired
hands, would go to the trouble of popping round or phoning to say,
‘Back off - you’ve been warned.’ Corelli would just assume that
Kovaks was intelligent enough to get the message.

And now that Whisper was dead - the only chink in Corelli’s
ring of steel- there was no way they could tie Hinksman and Corelli
together. Everything he’d told Kovaks before being knifed to death
wasn’t worth the breath it had been whispered on.

They were as far away as ever.

Once again, Corelli was out of reach. Untouchable.

Kovaks had started with a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s. A
quarter of it had slid effortlessly down to his empty stomach and
then very quickly up to his head, clouding his
judgement.

Drink makes people do rash things.

Holding the bottle by the neck, he stormed out of the
apartment down the blackened, burned hallway - and out to his car
on the street below.

Without hesitation, other than the drunken delay caused by the
problem of getting the key in the ignition, he drove south towards
Miami.

He drove quickly, recklessly, with no regard for other
road-users. With one hand gripping the wheel and one hand around
the bottle, frequently necking mouthfuls of the fiery liquid
contained therein, he was fortunate not to have caused a serious
accident.

Once in Miami itself, he did a left onto MacArthur Causeway
and headed out in the direction of Miami Beach and the Art Deco
section where Corelli had a house. It was a 1930s mansion really,
surrounded by a high wall, high security and a two-acre manicured
garden with peacocks and arty statues.

Kovaks drew up at the high, wrought-iron gates. They stayed
closed. A camera up on the wall focused on him and he waved at it.
Still nothing happened. He staggered out of the driver’s seat and
rang the intercom set in the wall.

‘
Yeah?’ came a voice. Friendly? No.

‘
FBI - let me in. I wanna see Corelli,’ slurred the
agent.

‘
Goodbye.’ The intercom went dead.

Kovaks continued to lean on the buzzer whilst peering
drunkenly through the gates up towards the house which was
discreetly half-hidden by trees and topiary.

Eventually the front door of the house opened and two men in
tracksuits meandered down the driveway. They walked on the balls of
their feet. A tough guy’s walk. Rolling shoulders, twisting hips.
Smug. Each man carried a pump action shotgun. Kovaks recognised
them as a couple of Corelli’s minor heavies. He sneered at them,
the drink making him much braver than he should have been under the
circumstances.

They arrived at the gate. Their expressions remained impassive
but superior. One stood slightly behind the other, to one side, the
shotgun held across his chest. The one at the front did the
talking.

‘
What you want?’

‘
I wanna see Corelli - OK, bud?’

‘
Go away.’

‘
Let me see him.’

‘
You gotta warrant?’

‘
Don’t need one - I’m backed by the power of Federal law,’
Kovaks spat stupidly.

‘
Bye bye,’ said the talking heavy. To reinforce his statement
he laid the barrel of his shotgun on a cross member in the gate,
pointing the weapon about chest-height at Kovaks. He pumped it. It
was a deadly sound. ‘You don’t go right now, I’ll have to phone the
cops and tell ‘em I had to shoot a drunken intruder.’

Kovaks stiffened. The insinuation got through his drunkenness.
‘I just want to talk to Corelli,’ he said.

‘
Well, he ain’t here.’

‘
Where is he, then - Key West?’

The heavy checked his watch. ‘By now he’s about halfway across
the Atlantic.’

‘
Why, where’s he going?’ Kovaks asked too quickly, making the
heavy realise he’d said too much.

‘
Just shove it, man,’ he said, beginning to lose his cool, his
voice rising up towards agitation. ‘You don’t go, I pull this
trigger.’

Kovaks conceded defeat and rolled back into his car. He
slammed it into reverse and screeched backwards out of the
driveway. He pulled away with the flourish of a boy racer, a finger
for the two heavies and a head out of the window shouting, ‘Fuck
you, assholes!’ It was the most original insult his drink-sodden
mind could manage.

He reached across the passenger seat, swerving dangerously
into, then out of, the path of an oncoming car, and fumbled for the
bottle of JD. With an angry horn sounding in his ears he took a
hefty swig of what should have been sipped without spilling a drop.
He was quite proud of the accomplishment.

‘
So he’s goin’ to England, eh?’ Kovaks murmured. ‘Better let
that cunt Donaldson know.’

His right foot went down heavy on the accelerator and the big
engine roared with pleasure as it picked up speed.

Halfway back across MacArthur Causeway he heard a distinctive
sound right behind him: the shriek of a police patrol car siren,
the one blast that meant ‘pull over.’ Kovaks checked his rearview
mirror and saw the car behind him, two officers on board,
roof-lights flashing. He drew into the side of the road as smoothly
as his state would allow and stopped with a lurch. He rested his
hands on the top of the steering wheel where they could be
seen.

One of the officers stayed half-in, half-out of the patrol
car. The other one approached Kovaks with the caution of bad
experience and good training. His right hand rested significantly
on the butt of his holstered revolver.

Kovaks stayed where he was and awaited
instructions.

‘
Get out of the car, please sir, and place your hands on the
roof.

Re-al slow, like.’

Kovaks obeyed every word to the letter.

At the end of these formalities, when it had been established
that Kovaks was unarmed, the officer said, ‘Is this your car,
sir?’

‘
It is.’

‘
We’ve received a report of a possible drunk driver in the Art
Deco area, in a red Trans-Am.’

‘
Who made the report, officer?’ Kovaks enquired
politely.

‘
Anonymous caller, sir - but obviously correct. I can smell
alcohol on your breath, your eyes are glazed over and you have
slurred some of your words. I therefore suspect you to be drinking
and driving. I am therefore requesting you to provide a breath
specimen for a breathalyser test.’

‘
I don’t suppose it’ll make a difference if I tell you I’m a
Federal Agent?’ he asked hopefully.

‘
You don’t suppose right, sir.’

Kovaks closed his eyes in despair. Bubbled by the Mafia. The
perfect end to a fucking perfect day.

Chapter Fifteen

The wide-bodied jet touched down smoothly at Manchester
Airport, despite the strongly gusting cross-winds. As is the norm
in many airports now, the arrival was not heralded by tannoy, but
merely blipped up on the numerous TV monitors dotted around the
terminus.

Henry Christie and Karl Donaldson watched the plane taxi to
the gate and the motorised steps be driven, rather like small,
controllable dinosaurs, to the front and rear doors of the plane.
The doors were heaved open and after a pause the first of the
passengers began to disembark.

Donaldson held his breath.

Henry noted his tension.

Then the American said, ‘That’s him,’ and pointed. ‘The guy in
the suit. He’s brought one of his goons with him.’

Henry looked through his binoculars, focused them on Corelli
as he clambered down the steps at the front of the
plane.

‘
So that’s what a Mafia godfather looks like. Looks more like
a grandfather,’ commented Henry.

‘
Don’t let looks deceive you. That’s one of his strengths.
People are taken in by him.’

‘
But I’m well pissed off with this,’ Henry moaned. ‘He just
doesn’t fit my stereotype. Isn’t life complicated?’

‘
Sure is, Henry,’ Donaldson muttered bleakly.

Henry gave Donaldson a sidelong glance and wondered what was
on his mind. ‘Let’s get down to Customs,’ he said, ‘and make his
entry into Limey as uncomfortable as possible.’

‘
Good idea,’ agreed Donaldson, pleased at the prospect. ‘Pity
that the only way we can get at the bastard is by getting him
stopped and searched. He should be on Death Row by
rights.’

They began to make their way down from the public viewing
gallery.

Donaldson thought about the rushed telephone call he’d
received about two hours earlier from Joe Kovaks. He’d called from
the cop shop in Miami where he’d been taken following his
drink-drive arrest. He’d been released after giving a blood sample
which would be analysed before any court proceedings, but they
wouldn’t give him his car keys back until he provided them with a
negative specimen of breath. So he’d been very unhappy.

Even though the situation had been pretty tragic for Kovaks,
Donaldson could barely contain his mirth at the predicament and its
irony; the bare-faced cheek of the Mafia and how one quick phone
call had put Kovaks’ job on the line - because the FBI had a tough
policy on lawbreakers within its own ranks. Drink-driving in
particular was frowned upon. Several agents had been fired because
of it. But Donaldson’s amusement had waned, then turned to anger
and horror when Kovaks told him about Chrissy ... and then burst
into tears down the phone.

The two lawmen had already introduced themselves to Customs
and the airport police. They took up a position behind screens,
together with one of the airport detectives and a Customs officer,
from where they could see through one-way windows into the baggage
reclaim hall and both Customs channels, green and red: Nothing To
Declare and Goods To Declare.

By prior arrangement two armed cops - with revolvers and MP5s
on open display - had been posted to the Customs area. Not that
problems were expected. Corelli wasn’t stupid. They simply wanted
the godfather to feel under pressure when the uniformed Customs
officers singled him out from the other passengers in order to
search his luggage.