Violet Dawn Read online

  Violet Dawn

  Alex Hyland

  For my mother.

  1

  The tiny receiver in my left ear buzzed with static as I weaved through the guests.

  Agent Willard’s voice crackled into my head. ‘Do you see him?’

  I searched the crowds, but there had to be five hundred people in the house. A fancy party on North Lake Shore, the place was packed wall-to-wall with Chicago’s finest.

  ‘Answer me,’ said Willard.

  ‘Not yet,’ I replied. The mic in my tie relayed the message.

  I headed into the main reception and a thick soup of conversations and laughter. I glanced around the room – the aftermath of some fashion show. A raised catwalk stretched across the floor, willowy models drifting through the crowds. It might have been the kind of party that I’d liked to have hung out at for a while, but not tonight. I needed to get out as quickly as I could.

  I slowed as I caught sight of the party’s host – a wiry little Chanel spider named Marianne Shelby. I didn’t know that much about her – in her eighties, one of Chicago’s rich widows. She stood arm-in-arm with some beady-eyed boyfriend who looked even older than she did. Jesus, they brought new meaning to the term ‘carbon dating’.

  ‘Where are we?’ said Willard. ‘Do you see him yet?’

  I kept my eyes on the guests milling around Shelby, but the guy we were looking for, Chris Joseph, was nowhere. I checked my watch. Shit, we were running out of time.

  ‘Alright, I’m going to get myself thrown out,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Willard replied.

  ‘We can’t wait.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  This needed to be done gently. I couldn’t start a fight or anything else that might risk me getting detained by the police. I grabbed a glass of champagne from one of the busboys, then weaved toward Shelby. She and her boyfriend were introducing a small circle of guests to some artsy-looking brunette in her twenties – the fashion designer, I guessed.

  A guy in his fifties kissed Shelby on the cheek. ‘It was a stunning show, Marianne. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘But it was Jemma’s night.’

  The guy nodded at the artsy girl. ‘Your designs are spectacular.’

  As Jemma smiled gratefully, I barged my way into the circle.

  ‘Hey, everybody, I’m Rick!’ I said.

  All eyes on me – all of them antagonistic, except for Shelby, who smiled.

  ‘Good evening, Rick,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘A good evening it certainly is. Nice house. Great party, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you. Did you enjoy the show?’

  ‘Oh, it was great.’ I took a deep gulp of champagne then glanced at Jemma. ‘Although... you need to get some regular-looking girls up on that catwalk. Just for your own sanity, you know.’

  Jemma stared at me. ‘My own sanity?’

  ‘Yeah, you got these gorgeous models, but so what? They already look great. It’s like getting Jesus to sell surfboards, he can walk on the fucking water anyhow.’ A moment of silence. Good.

  Shelby eyed me coolly. ‘Sorry, you are?’

  ‘Rick. Sullivan.’

  ‘Yes, and you’re a friend of?’

  ‘Oh, no one really. I’m a blogger. Celebrity gossip, you know, who’s had their tits done. I heard about your party thing here, thought I’d see what was going on.’

  ‘I see. Do you mind me asking how you got in?’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, I know, I slipped past your security guys. Don’t worry, I’m not an asshole.’

  Shelby’s boyfriend smiled politely to the others. ‘Excuse me.’

  I watched as he headed off into the crowd, then I stepped away from the circle myself. ‘Anyhow, I’m going to get another drink,’ I said. ‘Anybody want anything? Hmmm? No? OK.’

  I headed toward the main hallway, readying myself for my imminent departure. I made sure I stayed in Shelby’s line of sight, then glanced at the main door. I

  needed to get him outside where it was quiet.

  ‘You need to get moving,’ said Willard.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The plane’s already landed.’

  ‘I’m on it!’

  A huge security guy appeared beside Shelby. Six-two, mixed race – this was the guy, this was Chris Joseph. Shelby spoke to him for a moment, then pointed in my direction.

  He started making his way toward me.

  ‘OK, I got him, he’s coming,’ I said.

  ‘Fast!’ said Willard.

  I eyed Joseph’s suit. Prada. Silk weave, slim fit, I knew it well. Three pockets, one internal in the left panel.

  Joseph stopped in front of me. ‘Rick Sullivan?’

  I grinned at him. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If you could follow me, please.’

  ‘Why, where are we going?’

  He ushered me toward the main door. ‘You’re not on the guest list.’

  ‘I’m press.’

  ‘This is a private party.’

  I ground to a stubborn halt as he opened the main door. He grabbed me by the arm.

  ‘Hey, get your hands off me!’ I said.

  He gripped me harder as he opened the main door.

  ‘Hey, you’re hurting me man, Jesus!’

  As he pushed me out into the front courtyard, my hand slid inside his jacket. Leather slim-fold wallet – I had it in a second – but I wasn’t done yet. I purposely slipped and fell to the ground.

  ‘Motherfucker!’ I said. I eyed him intently. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Just get going.’

  I got to me feet. ‘No, no, what’s your name? You nearly broke my goddamn arm! I’m going to fucking sue your ass!’

  He laughed. ‘You’re not going to do anything.’

  ‘Your name! Come on! I’ll get it anyhow. I’ll subpoena that boss of yours if I have to, the bitch!’

  And that was it – no matter how pathetic I might have looked to him, he wouldn’t risk any hassle for Shelby.

  ‘You know who Marianne Shelby is?’ he said. ‘I’d let it go if I were you.’

  ‘I mean it!’ I said.

  He laughed to himself. ‘Chris Joseph. Good luck with it, fucker.’

  The moment he turned and headed back into the house, I ran for my car.

  ‘You get it?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Willard. ‘I’m sending it to your phone now.’

  ‘How much time have we got?’

  ‘Twenty minutes. He’s heading north on 94.’

  Shit, I needed to get to Glencoe fast. I started up the car, screeched past the park, then swung into the first road that took me north.

  ‘OK I’m heading north on Pine,’ I said.

  ‘Pine?’ said Willard. ‘Hang on, Pine’s one-way!’

  ‘I’m only going one way!’

  I hit the accelerator and weaved through the oncoming traffic. As car horns blared all around me, I grabbed Joseph’s wallet and shook out its contents. Cash and cards spilled across the passenger seat. Among the cards was one that looked like a blank strip of aluminum. I picked it up – there was a tiny serial number etched into its surface. Headlights blinded me for a second – I swerved the car into the next lane.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ replied Willard.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I made sure there were no police units on my tail, then floored the pedal – the oncoming headlights accelerating into a fluid blur. I weaved through the traffic, then swung the car out onto the empty air of the highway, tires screeching as I sped north toward Glencoe and the rows of limestone mansions that sat on Lake Michigan.

  I tried to calm my breathing, but there were just minutes left to us now. We
’d only found out an hour ago that Chris Joseph worked security for one other client aside from Marianne Shelby – a shipping contractor named David Massa. The agency had been monitoring Massa for a couple of months. I don’t know what shit he was involved in, but my orders were simple – get into Massa’s house and photograph the most recent entries in a green suede diary on his desk. Although his house wasn’t that far from Shelby’s, he was arriving back in Chicago tonight and the guy had landed early – which meant I was in the usual shit the agency liked to drop me in.

  I followed the shore until the city lights faded, then weaved into the quiet suburb. Nothing but trees and tastefully lit driveways, the houses here well hidden from the roads. I turned down a leafy side street, then came to a stop beside the twelve-foot brick wall that surrounded Massa’s house. His chateau-style villa looked dark and still, a sprawling shadow rising above the cypress trees beyond the wall.

  ‘I’m outside the house,’ I said.

  ‘He’s coming off the 94,’ said Willard. ‘You’ve got eight minutes tops.’

  The wall around the house had two gates – a main and a service entrance, each granting access via a security panel in the wall. As I ran over to the service entrance, I checked my phone – the message from Willard was waiting. I took a quick look around me, then brushed Joseph’s security card against the panel by the gate. An LED screen in the panel flickered into life.

  A request written on the screen: Please say your name.

  I held my phone up to the screen and played the message that Willard had sent me.

  ‘Chris Joseph,’ came the voice from my phone.

  The screen went blank for a moment, just a tiny blue dot circling in its center, indicating that the voice recognition system was processing.

  The gate slid silently open. No complications. Good.

  ‘I’m in,’ I said.

  ‘His office is to the rear, overlooking the lake,’ said Willard.

  I darted through the gardens toward a door at the side of the house. A similar access panel in the wall by the door. I swiped Joseph’s card, then played his voice into the panel. The security system processed the voice.

  The door clicked open. I slipped inside.

  Next to no light in the house, just a thick weave of shadows – windows and chairs silhouetted against the night glow of the lake. I crept through the darkness, following the windows around the rear of the house. I passed through a video screening room, a huge, lifeless TV on the wall beside me. Beyond the TV, an open door led into a large circular office overlooking the water. I could see a laptop and phone sitting on a wooden desk by the windows. I ran over to the desk and opened its single drawer. Sitting among a pile of documents at the bottom was the green suede diary.

  ‘I got it,’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ said Willard. ‘We’re looking for anything that looks like arrival dates, flight details.’

  I opened the diary. The pages were crammed with complex entries, shorthand and abbreviations. The guy evidently didn’t trust computers.

  ‘There’s a lot of stuff in here,’ I said.

  ‘Just photograph the pages back until the twelfth, then put it back where you found it.’

  I took out my phone, turned on the flash, and started photographing the pages. As I did, my mood calmed a little. Massa would be back any minute, but things were running smoothly – the door, the diary, it was all just as the agency had said. I may not have liked the guys at Southwest Intelligence much, but they knew what they were doing.

  I finished photographing the diary, then carefully placed it back in the desk. I closed the drawer, then looked around for the master security panel. I needed to delete Chris Joseph’s arrival this evening. As I scanned the office walls, I heard a door close somewhere in the house.

  I froze as I gazed into the darkness. ‘Where’s Massa?’ I whispered.

  ‘Four minutes away.’

  I listened carefully. Footsteps – coming from beyond the video screening room. Whoever it was, they were heading this way. I ducked back into the shadows of the office.

  ‘Someone’s here,’ I whispered.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Willard.

  I kept my eyes on the screening room – blue light erupting from the TV. I stayed absolutely still as a guy in a white bathrobe drifted over to the sofa and sat down. Mid-thirties. Latino-looking. He ran a hand through his soaking wet hair, then placed a glass of whiskey on the corner table. He grabbed the TV remote and started browsing the news channels.

  I kept my voice low. ‘OK, I’ve got a Latino male. Mid-thirties. Five-ten.’

  ‘Has he seen you?’

  ‘No.’ I glanced at another door in the office by the windows. ‘I think I can get out without him knowing.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Willard. ‘Latino?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Willard. He went quiet for a moment as he rustled through papers on his desk.

  ‘He’s watching TV,’ I said. ‘I can get out.’

  ‘Five-ten?’ said Willard. ‘Can you confirm a burn mark on his right arm?’

  I tried to see more clearly through the screening room door, but the guy was slouched back on the sofa.

  ‘I can’t see,’ I said.

  Willard’s voice became muffled as he spoke to someone else on a phone.

  I glanced at the windows overlooking the lake. ‘Willard...’ I said.

  ‘Wait,’ he replied.

  As he continued his other conversation, I kept my eyes on the screening room.

  ‘You see the burn mark yet?’ he said to me.

  ‘No.’

  He spoke again into the phone. ‘No confirmation,’ he said. He paused a moment. ‘Understood.’ He put down the phone.

  Willard’s voice low and clear in my earpiece. ‘Kill him, Michael.’

  It felt like a hammer blow. ‘What?’

  ‘I say again, kill him. This is the target. The information in the diary was his arrival plans in the US... the plans obviously changed. We won’t find him again. We need to do this now.’

  ‘Willard...’

  ‘That’s an order, Michael.’

  I just stared at the guy.

  Fuck.

  My job at the agency was to just lift keys and wallets, gain information. But this was the second time I’d ended up in the direct vicinity of one of their targets, and the agency seemed to have no problem asking me to handle it. I’d been saved from pulling the trigger the first time by the arrival of the target’s family, but I doubted I’d be that lucky tonight. I’d killed before, admittedly – the guys responsible for my brother’s death – but this was different. There was no anger or desire in this, nothing human about it I could retreat into. It was too cold. Alien. In the movies, James Bond kills a guy then strolls off and orders himself a Martini. The reality for me was I’d probably spend the next two weeks shivering under a duvet, clutching at an industrial-sized bucket of vodka. Willard’s voice in my ear. ‘Michael!’

  I kept my eyes on the guy.

  ‘I can’t confirm it’s him,’ I said.

  ‘The burn mark, it’s on his inner right arm. It should look like an arrow.’

  I couldn’t see it – not that it would have made any difference even if I could. I was looking for a way out of this, and Willard knew it.

  ‘You need to do this now,’ he said.

  ‘Who is he?’ I said. ‘What he’s done.’

  ‘That’s not your business.’

  ‘Killing isn’t my business either.’

  ‘You need to do it now!’ He paused a moment, tempering the frustration in his voice. ‘We can’t afford this guy leaving the house, trust me.’

  I closed my eyes. Fuck.

  I took a deep breath. For God and country. Tomorrow was the prize.

  ‘Michael!’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  I reached for the pistol in my jacket, gazed at it, then slowly raised the barrel. I tried to calm myself – quiet, deep breaths a
s I crept toward the screening room. The guy was steeped in the blaze of the TV screen. As he browsed another news channel, I reached the screening room door and aimed the gun at him.

  ‘Don’t move,’ I said.

  He spun round, caught sight of the pistol in my hand, then froze.

  ‘Show me your right arm,’ I said.

  He stayed quiet. Kept his eyes on me.

  ‘Your right arm! Show me!’

  The room fell black as the TV went dead... a shadow leaping through the darkness toward me. I pulled the trigger, then collapsed as the guy crashed into me – his body crushing me to the floor, my pistol slipping across the boards. The blood hammered through my veins as I grabbed hold of him. I wrapped an arm around his neck, clenched a fist, then went still. The guy wasn’t moving. His head remained drooped against my shoulder.

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see it – the bullet had caught him in the left side of his face. An ugly exit wound had torn out the back of his head. I rolled his body off me, my gaze fixed on the fading hint of life in his eyes.

  The blood pouring down his face as his expression turned hollow.

  Willard’s voice in my ear. ‘Michael!’

  I couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Michael, what’s happened?’

  I slowly reached across his body and rolled up the right sleeve of his robe.

  Nothing.

  My hands shook as I checked his other arm. Fuck.

  ‘No burn mark,’ I said. ‘There’s no burn mark, Willard!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Jesus...’

  ‘Get out. Just get out!’

  The whisper of a car pulling up at the front of the house. I gazed back at the guy – the blood pooling across the boards beneath his head. His eyes empty.

  I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the pistol from the floor, then tore through the rooms. Out into the gardens. My head burning as I tumbled toward the cold, numbing darkness of the lake.

  2

  I raised the vodka bottle to my lips as I sat on the floor of Arlen Connell’s kitchen. I took a deep mouthful, then closed my eyes and rested my head against the cupboards. The air conditioning blowing rivulets around my fingers. The lawn sprinklers spitting into life outside in the manicured New Hampshire garden. I didn’t feel the pain any more. Nineteen hours since Massa’s house, and I was numb. Just a faulty appliance sitting in Arlen’s kitchen.