Switch (9 page)

‘What are you talking about?’ Sam asked, frustration clear in his voice.

‘Pride is a sin, Sam.’

‘I apologize,’ Sam snapped. ‘There! Can we end this now?’

‘I told you to listen. Do not test me. You won’t like where it leads.’

Sam took another deep breath. ‘OK, I’m sorry. I’m listening.’

‘You are not to pay for the alcohol,’ the voice continued. ‘The owner of that store has been robbed four times in the last six weeks. During the last attempt, the thief’s head was removed from his shoulders by shotgun. You may have read about it. The unrepentant store owner was hailed by media and police as a local hero. Along with relishing the glory, he now has a taste for blood.’

Sam groaned. ‘Christ.’

‘You may wish to retrieve your weapon from its locker at the mall before entering the store. I will call again in two hours. If you have not accomplished this task, I will execute your wife. The choice, as always, is entirely yours.’

Sam blurted, ‘Can we meet—’ but the phone went dead before he could complete the plea.

Sam let the phone fall on to the bed, his face ashen.

‘Your first assignment,’ Zack said, his voice barely above a whisper.

29

Alan Robertson picked at his supper, his fork slicing through a baby red-skinned potato. He moved the half-moon pieces to one side where they would wait to be sliced again.

He didn’t notice his wife’s worried stare radiating from the other end of the oblong table. Nor did he hear the escalating squabble between his two children as they argued over whose turn it was on the PlayStation 3 after supper.

When the phone rang, Alan rose automatically and walked to the front hall where his wife had fashioned an elegant alcove. A cordless phone sat on an antique roll-top desk beside a red-velvet bench.

Alan remained standing as he answered the ringing receiver.

‘Did you read the email?’ asked a voice that Alan knew too well.

‘Yes.’

‘And watch the news?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shame about his family.’

‘Y–yes.’ Alan’s voice cracked.

‘It must have been horrible.’

‘Y–yes.’

‘What would you do to save yours?’

‘Anything. I would do anything.’

‘I believe you.’

Alan sunk to his knees with the phone still pressed against his ear. The ceramic tiles were hard, but comfortably warm from the under-floor heating. He had sacrificed no expense to give his family the best of everything, and yet when they needed him most, his money was worthless.

‘Isn’t there something else I can do to show how sorry I am?’ Alan asked.

There was a long pause, and then, ‘You should have thought about that before, Alan, when it would have mattered.’

‘But I never lied. I . . . I . . .’

‘You told what you saw, Alan, not what you knew. You were in that room, too.’

‘It was the lawyers. They only asked—’

‘Too late!’ the voice screamed. ‘Far too fucking late, Alan.’ He was breathing heavy now. ‘Do you love your family?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want them to suffer?’

‘No. God, no.’

‘Then prepare yourself and wait for my call.
You’ll have one chance and one chance only. Do you understand?’

Alan’s voice was barely audible. ‘Yes.’

The phone went dead in his hand and Alan began to weep.

30

‘I’ll need your keys,’ Sam said.

Zack held them up so the laser-etched Mercedes logo caught the light.

‘They’re yours,’ he said. ‘But stop for a second and hear me out.’

Sam frowned.

‘I know this is difficult,’ Zack continued. ‘Hell, it’s impossible, but this is exactly what he did to me. He kept me running around so much that I didn’t take the time to think. I just reacted, like you’re doing. But there are two of us now. What did he ask you to do?’

Sam hesitated, and then explained.

Zack thought for a moment. ‘He’ll need to be watching somehow – to make sure you don’t cheat and just pay.’

‘Christ,’ Sam groaned. ‘I didn’t even think about paying.’

‘Amazing how quickly we change, huh? In different circumstances, we’re all different men.
This is what he wants, to break us down, bit by bit. We have to out-think him.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Zack said. ‘But drop me off around the block. Maybe I can catch him watching you. If we can get a licence plate, a face, a name, something that will tell us why he’s picked us, then maybe we can end this before your family pays the same price as mine.’

Sam thought about it. ‘He said I should get my gun.’

Zack raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m in no position to judge anything you do.’

Sam chewed on a fingernail, quickly ripping it down to the quick.

‘If he wants me to get the gun, I should do it. It doesn’t mean I have to use it, but if I defy him on this, he may take that as a challenge.’

‘Let’s do it, then.’ Zack got to his feet and held out the car keys. ‘You want to drive?’

Sam waved him off. ‘Like you said before, I need to think.’

31

On the way to the mall, Sam stared at Zack, his mind chugging through its gears. Underneath the exhaustion, he had a good face, handsome, sharp and obviously intelligent. It even seemed vaguely familiar, but Sam doubted he was part of the acting brigade. He was good at remembering the competition.

‘What did he make you do?’ Sam asked.

‘My first assignment?’ said Zack.

Sam nodded.

‘Nothing like this,’ Zack said. ‘I was to run five red lights in different parts of San Diego.’

‘San Diego?’

‘That’s where I live . . . lived.’ Zack paused. ‘Nothing left there for me now.’

‘Why the red lights?’

‘Until that point in my life, I’d never even had a speeding ticket. Squeaky clean, I was.’ Zack grimaced. ‘My palms were sweating so badly I could hardly hold the steering wheel. Nearly
crashed at two of the intersections, too. Cars everywhere, honking and screeching tyres. He was timing me between lights. I only had so much time.’

‘What did he get out of making you do that?’

Zack shrugged. ‘Got me an arrest warrant, I suppose. Each of the lights he chose had one of those automatic cameras installed. I don’t know how long it takes for the cops to download the photos or whatever, but I knew when they saw my car running five lights in one afternoon, they would be tracking me down. That alone made me paranoid about every cruiser I saw, wondering when they were going to pull me over, take me out of the game.’

‘That’s what he threatened me with. If the cops became involved and I couldn’t respond to his calls, my family was dead.’

‘Yeah,’ Zack sighed. ‘Bastard holds a short leash.’

At the mall, Sam slid out of the Mercedes and raced inside, snaking his way through the unruly dinner crowds.

When he reached the escalators, he cut off from the main walkway and headed up the side corridor that led to the washrooms. Entering the
Authorized Personnel Only
doors, he took a sharp left to reach a single blue door labelled
Security
.

He unlocked the door and slipped inside.

Sitting on the bench facing the lockers, Sam spun the dial on his padlock and yanked it open. Since he had removed his uniform, the inside was practically bare, containing only his black leather shoes, leather holster and belt, and the small blue plastic gun box.

He lifted out the box and unlocked it.

From inside, Sam withdrew his company-issue Smith & Wesson Model 25 revolver in blued carbon steel and Cocobolo finger-groove grips. It was the kind of gun designed to look intimidating when worn on the hip, yet at 39 ounces it was still light enough to carry around for an eight-hour shift.

Sam’s permit only allowed him to carry the gun while on duty within the confines of the mall. The company issued additional temporary permits whenever he needed to transport the gun to the shooting range for his monthly practice sessions. But those permits had to be ordered at least two days in advance.

Sam slipped the gun into his belt at the small of his back and stuffed a box of standard .45 cartridges into his pocket. He returned the gun case to the locker and re-spun the lock.

Just as he stood, the door opened and Harry Coombs, one of four day-shift guards, entered.

‘Oh, hey, Sam,’ Harry bellowed good-naturedly. ‘Awful keen today, ain’t ya?’

Harry was six foot five, with wide shoulders, so he had to slip in through the doorway sideways.
Despite his bulky size, Harry’s head still looked too large for his body and sported a meaty, shovel-flat face. If they ever made another
Flintstones
movie, Sam was sure Harry could land a good part.

Sam smiled nervously as his hand slipped behind his back to make sure the gun was secure in his belt and hidden from sight by his grey vest.

‘I forgot something in my locker last night,’ Sam said, thinking quickly. ‘Didn’t want it stinking up the place.’

Harry laughed, exposing a set of crooked, yellow teeth.

‘Fuck, yeah, I hear ya,’ he said. ‘Remember when that English dude – was it Winston or Cecil? Something sissy like that, anyway – when he left some of his weird cheese here? Chrrrist, did that stink.’

‘He never lived it down,’ Sam added. ‘You called him Cheese Head until the day he packed it in.’

Harry roared and slapped the wall so hard, Sam could hear plaster breaking.

‘I called him Stinky Fuckin’ Cheese Head till the day he quit. Served him right, too. Some days I think I can still smell it.’ Harry lifted his nose towards the ceiling and sniffed loudly.

‘Nah, that’s your giant feet you smell, Harry.’

Harry laughed again and swung one of his size 18 Wingtip Oxfords in a mock kick.

‘So what did you forget?’ he asked.

‘Err, tuna sandwich,’ Sam said. ‘Just starting to go ripe, too.’

Harry wrinkled his nose.

‘Well, get it the fuck out of here, then. I think I’m beginning to smell it.’ He grinned. ‘Fish Head.’

Sam groaned, but took the excuse to leave the tiny room and Harry’s curiosity behind.

Back in the corridor, Sam readjusted the gun and moved quickly through the staff doors to rejoin the noisy stream of busy shoppers.

As soon as Sam exited the mall, Zack pulled the Mercedes to the kerb and picked him up.

‘Any problem?’ Zack asked.

‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’

The two men travelled in silence as Zack negotiated the traffic to take them downtown. Sam watched, his curiosity engaged, as Zack expertly switched out of congested lanes to swing down side roads and merge back with traffic in places where the lights weren’t so stubborn.

‘You know the roads well,’ Sam said. ‘I thought you lived in San Diego.’

‘I’ve spent the last twenty years down south, but I grew up here. I used to cruise these streets at all hours in my teens. My first car was a beauty, too. ’73 Mustang rag-top in mustard yellow with black trim, loaded with a gas-guzzlin’ V8 pushing 266 horses.’

‘Get out.’

‘My father gave it to me when I passed my driver’s test, but I think he was disappointed.’

‘Disappointed?’

‘He really liked the idea of a chick magnet in his driveway. But when I came home with my gang of Science Club nerds rather than the cheerleading squad, I had the feeling he felt he had wasted his money.’

‘He wanted to recapture his youth through you,’ Sam suggested.

‘He was as big a nerd as I was and always had been. I think he wanted me to be different.’ Zack paused. ‘To be the cool kid he never got a chance to be.’

‘Wasn’t in the genes,’ Sam added.

‘You got that right.’

32

One block from the liquor store, Zack pulled in to the kerb. ‘You want to walk or drive from here?’

‘Think he knows about you?’ Sam asked. ‘That you’re helping me?’

‘I couldn’t say. He knows more than he should, but I’ve never caught anyone tailing us.’

Sam looked around reflexively, scanning the light traffic. He licked his lips. ‘If he wants to make sure I don’t pay, he would need to be watching from inside the store, right?’

‘Makes sense.’

‘At the mall,’ Sam continued, ‘we can watch each store from the security booth on close-circuit cameras. If this liquor store has them, and he’s somehow tapped in from the outside, then he could watch everything without exposing himself.’

‘Shit!’ Zack rubbed his face with his hands. ‘If that’s the case, he won’t be lurking around for me to spot.’

Sam sighed. ‘May as well drop me at the front door, then. Until we know more, this fucker holds all the cards.’

Sam approached the reinforced steel door of the liquor store with his stomach in knots. It was like stepping on stage, a feeling that you were going to forget all your lines and vomit on your shoes.

As he walked, he went over the preparations he had made in the car. He’d used a small key to unlock the Smith & Wesson’s internal safety mechanism and loaded it with five, 200-grain, copper-jacketed .45 Colts. He left the sixth-chamber empty, as he had been trained to do, to prevent an accidental discharge.

After just a few steps, he had to discreetly move the revolver to the pocket of his vest as its steel had grown inexplicably hot against his skin. The loaded weight of it, instead of bringing comfort, made him feel noticeably lopsided.

A single window broke the store’s solid brick façade, but even that source of light was heavily barred in black steel. The store looked so uninviting, Sam wondered if the owner wasn’t selling drugs and under-the-counter Thai porn rather than booze.

When he entered through the heavy door, a buzzer sounded, its tone a startlingly rude burp.

Sam scanned the interior, noticing several cameras in the corners of the ceiling. The store was packed with solid wooden shelves crammed
with spirits. Large, glass-fronted coolers along the rear walls also carried a generous selection of beer, wine and sugary alco-pops.

‘Can I help you?’ asked a gruff voice.

Sam turned to see a balding man with tumbleweed salt-and-ginger eyebrows and a colour-coordinated, walrus-style moustache. Standing at barely five foot four, and just about as wide, the man looked like a solid square of muscle and fat.