Predator

She was ready with the lie. ‘Nothing coherent. Only some wild gibberish that didn’t make any sense.’ She felt him relax against her and she carried on with the charade: ‘What were you dreaming about, anyway?’

‘It was terrifying,’ he replied solemnly, his laughter almost hidden beneath his serious tone. ‘I dreamed that I pulled the hook out of the mouth of a fifty-pound salmon.’

It was an unspoken understanding between them. They had come to it as the only way they could keep the fragile light of their love for one another burning. Jo Stanley had been with Hector during the hunt for the two men who had murdered his wife. When at last they had succeeded in capturing them in the Arabian castle they had built for themselves in the depths of the jungles of central Africa, Jo had expected that Hector would hand the two killers over to the United States authorities for trial and punishment.

Jo was a lawyer and she believed implicitly in the rule of law. On the other hand Hector made his own rules. He lived in a world of violence wherein wrongs were avenged with biblical ruthlessness: an eye for an eye and a life for a life.

Hector had executed the first of the two murderers of his wife without recourse to the law. This was a man named Carl Bannock. Hector had fed him to his own pet crocodiles in the grounds of the Arabian castle where Hector had apprehended him. The great reptiles had torn Bannock’s living body to shreds and devoured it. Fortuitously Jo had not been present to witness the capture and execution of Carl Bannock. So afterwards she had been able to feign ignorance of the deed.

However, she had been with Hector when he had captured the second killer. This was a thug who used the alias Johnny Congo. He was already under sentence of death by the Texas court, but he had escaped. Jo had intervened fiercely to prevent Hector Cross taking the law into his own hands for a second time. Ultimately she had threatened to end their own relationship if Hector refused to hand Congo over to the law enforcement agencies of the state of Texas.

Reluctantly Hector had complied with her demands. It had taken several months but in the end the Texan court had confirmed the original sentence of death on Johnny Congo and had also found him guilty of further multiple murders committed since his escape from detention. They had set the date for his execution for 15 November, which was only two weeks ahead.

Jesus Christ, Johnny, what happened to your face?’

Shelby Weiss, senior partner of the Houston law firm of Weiss, Mendoza and Burnett – or Hebrew, Wetback and WASP as their less successful rivals liked to call them – was sitting in a small cubicle in Building 12 of the Allen B. Polunsky Unit in West Livingston, Texas, otherwise known as Death Row. The walls to either side of him were painted a faded, tatty lime green, and he was speaking into an old-fashioned black telephone handset, held in his left hand. In front of him he had a yellow legal pad and a line of sharpened pencils. On the other side of the glass in front of Weiss, in a cubicle of exactly similar dimensions but painted white, stood Johnny Congo, his client.

Congo had just been repatriated to the United States, having been rearrested in the Gulf State of Abu Zara several years after breaking out of the Walls Unit, as the Texas State Penitentiary, Huntsville, was known. He had spent most of that time when he was on the run in Africa, carving out a personal kingdom in the tiny nation of Kazundu on the shores of Lake Tanganyika with his former prison-bitch, turned business associate and life partner, Carl Bannock. That was Weiss’s connection. His firm had represented Bannock in his dealings with the family trust set up by his late adoptive father, Henry Bannock. The work had been entirely legitimate and extremely lucrative, for Carl Bannock and Shelby Weiss alike. Weiss, Mendoza and Burnett also represented Bannock in his role as an exporter of coltan, the ore from which tantalum, a metal more valuable than gold that is an essential element in a huge array of electrical products, was refined. Since the ore originated in the eastern Congo and could thus be considered a conflict mineral, no different from blood diamonds, this aspect of Carl Bannock’s affairs was more morally debatable. But even so, he was still entitled to the best representation money could buy. If Shelby Weiss had reason to suspect that Bannock was living with an escaped felon with whom he engaged in a variety of distasteful and even illegal activities, from drug-taking to sex-trafficking, he had no actual proof of any wrongdoing. Besides, Kazundu had no extradition treaty with the US, so the point was moot.

But then Johnny Congo had turned up in the Middle East, captured by an ex-British Special Forces officer called Hector Cross, who had been married to Henry Bannock’s widow, Hazel. So that, Weiss figured, made Carl Bannock family, except that there didn’t seem to be much brotherly love in this family. Hazel had been murdered. Cross had blamed Carl Bannock and had set out to get his revenge. Now Bannock had vanished from the face of the earth.

However, Hector Cross had seized Johnny Congo and handed him over to US Marshals in Abu Zara, which did have an extradition treaty with the United States. So here he was, back on Death Row, and Congo wasn’t a pretty sight. He had obviously been badly beaten.

Johnny Congo was crammed into his cubicle like a cannonball in a matchbox. He was a huge man, six foot six tall, and built to match. He was wearing a prisoner’s uniform of a white, short-sleeved cotton polo shirt, tucked into elasticized, pyjama-style pants, also white. There were two large black capital letters on his back – ‘DR’ – signifying that he was a Death Row inmate. The uniform was designed to be loose, but on Johnny Congo it was as tight as a sausage skin and the buttons strained to contain the knotted muscles of his chest, shoulders and upper arms, which gave him the look of a Minotaur: the half-man, half-bull monster of Greek mythology. Years of decadence and self-indulgence had made Congo run to fat, but he wore his gut like a weapon, just one more way to barge and bully his way through life. His wrists and ankles were manacled and chained. But the aspects of his appearance that had caught his attorney’s attention were the white splint crudely placed over his splayed and mangled nose; the distended flesh and swollen skin around his battered mouth; and the way his rich, dark West African skin had been given the red and purple sheen of over-ripe plums.

‘Guess I must have walked into a door, or had some kind of accident,’ Congo mumbled into his handset.

‘Did the Marshals do this to you?’ asked Weiss, trying to sound concerned but barely able to conceal the excitement in his voice. ‘If they did, I can use it in court. I mean, I read the report and it clearly states that you were already in restraints when they took you into custody in Abu Zara. Point is, if you posed no threat to them and couldn’t defend yourself, they had no grounds to use physical force against you. It’s not much, but it’s something. And we need all the help we can get. The execution’s set for November the fifteenth. That’s less than three weeks away.’

Congo shook his massive, shaven head. ‘Weren’t no Marshal did this to me. It was that white sonofabitch Hector Cross. I said something to him. Guess he took exception to it.’

‘What did you say?’

Congo’s shoulders quivered as he gave a low, rumbling laugh, as menacing as the sound of distant thunder. ‘I told him it was me gave the order to kill, and I quote, “your fucking whore wife”.’

‘Oh man …’ Weiss ran the back of his right hand across his forehead, then put the handset back to his mouth. ‘Did anyone else hear you?’

‘Oh yeah, everyone else heard me. I shouted it real loud.’

‘Dammit, Johnny, you’re not making it any easier for yourself.’

Congo stepped forward and leaned down, placing his elbows on the shelf in front of him. He stared through the glass with eyes that held such fury in them that Weiss flinched. ‘I had grounds, man, I had grounds,’ Congo growled. ‘That sonofabitch Cross took the only person I ever cared about in my whole fricking life and fed him to the goddamn crocodiles. They ate him alive. Did you hear me? Those scaly-assed mothers ate Carl alive! But Cross was dumb. He made two mistakes.’

‘Yeah, what kind of mistakes?’

‘First, he didn’t feed me to the crocodiles also. I wouldn’t have known anything about it if he had. I was out, man, pumped full of some kind of sedative, wouldn’t have felt a thing.’

Weiss lifted his right hand, still holding the pencil, with his palm towards the glass. ‘Whoa! Hold up. How do you know about these crocodiles if you were unconscious at the time they were eating your buddy?’

‘Heard Cross’s men mouthing off about it on the plane, laughing their asses off about the jaws crunching, Carl screaming for mercy. Lucky for them I was all tied up to a chair, wrapped in a cargo net. If I could have moved I’d have ripped their heads off and shoved them up their butts.’

‘But you don’t have any proof that Carl is dead, right? I mean, you didn’t see a body?’

‘How could I see a body?’ Congo cried, his voice rising indignantly. ‘I was out cold; Carl was in the crocodile’s guts! Why do you wanna ask me a stupid question like that?’

‘Because of the Bannock Trust,’ said Weiss quietly. ‘As long as there is no proof that Carl Bannock is dead, and Hector Cross sure won’t produce any proof, because that would make him a murderer, then the trust will be obliged to keep paying Carl his share of company profits. And anyone who, hypothetically, had access to Carl’s bank accounts would therefore benefit from that money. So, let me ask you again, for the record: do you have any direct, personal proof that Carl Bannock is dead?’

‘No, sir,’ said Johnny emphatically. ‘All I heard was people talking, never saw nothing, ’cause of being sedated at the time. And, come to think of it, I was still kinda spacey from the drugs when I was in the airplane. Could have been imagining what I heard, maybe dreaming, something like that.’

‘I agree. Sedative drugs can certainly create an effect akin to intoxication. It’s entirely possible that you never actually heard any conversation like the one you initially reported. Now, you said Cross made two mistakes. What was the second one?’

‘He didn’t dump me out the back of the plane. All he had to do was open the ramp at the back of the plane, slide me down it and just watch me fall …’ Johnny Congo whistled like the sound of a dropping weight. ‘… all the way down, twenty-five thousand feet till – bam!’ He slammed a sledgehammer fist into his palm.

‘You would’ve made a helluva crater,’ Weiss observed drily.

‘Yeah, I would that.’ Congo laughed and nodded his great bald head. ‘And if it’d been Cross in that chair and me lookin’ at him, I’ve have tossed him outta there like a human Frisbee. Wouldn’t think twice about it. He wanted to do it, too. Woulda done, weren’t for that dumbass bitch of his shooting her mouth off.’

Weiss looked back down at his notepad, frowning as he leafed back to what he’d written on an earlier page. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you said she was deceased.’

‘I said I had his wife killed, don’t be shy about it. But this was a different bitch, the one he started up with after the wife was dead. She’s an attorney, jus’ like you. Anyway, Cross called her Jo. This bitch started up whining at Cross about how he shouldn’t have killed Carl. How he’d gone far beyond the law of America … yeah, “the law that I practise and hold dear”, that’s what she called it. And what it came right down to was if Cross offed me too, same as he’d done Carl, he wasn’t getting no more of her sweet pussy ever again.’ Congo shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dunno why Cross let her whip him like that. I wouldna took it, some stupid slut running off her mouth, lecturing me about right and wrong. I’d have told her, “Your pussy belongs to me, bitch.” Teach her a lesson so she don’t make the same mistake twice, you know what I’m saying?’

‘I get the picture, yeah,’ said Weiss. ‘But do you? Let me paint it for you, just in case. When you broke out of the Walls Unit—’

Congo nodded. ‘Long time ago, now.’

‘Yes it was, but the law doesn’t care about that, because when you broke out, you were two weeks away from your execution date. You’d been found guilty of multiple homicides, not to mention all the ones carried out at your command during the period of your incarceration. You’d exhausted every possible avenue of appeal. They were going to strap you to a gurney, stick a needle in your arm and just watch until you died. And here’s your problem, Johnny. That’s what’s going to happen now. You were a fugitive. You were reapprehended. Now you’re right back where you were, the day you climbed into a laundry sack, got thrown in the back of a truck and drove right out through the main gates and on to the Interstate.’

If Weiss had been trying to impress Congo with the gravity of his situation, he failed. The big man’s face twisted into a ghastly, wounded parody of a smile. ‘Man, that was a sweet operation, though, wasn’t it?’ he said.

Weiss kept his expression impassive. ‘I’m an officer of the law, Johnny, I can’t congratulate you on what was obviously a criminal activity. But, yes, speaking objectively I can see that both the planning and the execution of the escape were carried out to a high standard of efficiency.’

‘Right. So how efficient you gonna be for me now?’

Shelby Weiss was wearing a $5,000 pair of hand-tooled Black Cabaret Deluxe boots from Tres Outlaws in El Paso. His suit came from Gieves and Hawkes at No. 1 Savile Row, London. His shirts were made for him in Rome. He ran his hand down the lapel of his jacket and said quietly, ‘I didn’t get to be dressed this way by being bad at my job. I’ll tell you what I’m going to attempt – the impossible. I’ll call in every favour I’m owed, use every connection I possess, have my smartest associates go through every case they can think of with a fine-toothed comb, see if I can find some grounds for an appeal. I’ll work my ass off, right up to the very last second. But I like to be totally honest with my clients, which is why I’ve got to tell you, I don’t hold out much hope.’

‘Huh,’ Congo grunted. ‘All right, I’m on your wavelength …’ He stood up straight, sighed and lifted his chained wrists so he could scratch the back of his neck. Then he spoke calmly, dropping the tough-guy, gangster attitude, almost as if he was talking to himself as much as Weiss. ‘All my life I’ve had people look at me and I know they’re thinking: He’s just a big, dumb nigger. The amount of times I’ve been called a gorilla – sometimes, they even think it’s a compliment. Like in High School, playing left tackle for the Nacogdoches Golden Dragons, Coach Freeney, he would say, “You played like a rampaging gorilla today, Congo,” meaning I’d busted up the sons of bitches in the other team’s defence, so some pretty-boy cracker quarterback could make his fancy throws and get all the cheerleaders wet. And I’d say, “Thank you, Coach,” practically calling him “Massa”.’

Now Congo’s intensity started building up again. ‘But inside, I knew I wasn’t dumb. Inside I knew I was better than them. And inside, right now, I understand exactly where I stand. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to contact a kid I used to know, D’Shonn Brown.’

Weiss looked surprised: ‘What, the D’Shonn Brown?’

‘What you mean? Only one guy I’ve ever heard of by that name.’

‘Just that D’Shonn Brown is kind of a prodigy. A kid from the projects, not even thirty yet and he’s already on his way to his first billion. Good-looking as hell, got a great story, all the pretty ladies lining up outside his bedroom. That’s some friend you got there.’

‘Well, tell the truth, it’s been a while since I saw him, so I ain’t fully up to date with his situation, but he’ll know exactly who I am. Tell him the date they’re taking me up to Huntsville for the execution. Then say I’d really like to see him, you know, maybe for a visit or something, before they put me on that gurney and give me the needle. Me and his brother Aleutian were real tight. Loot got killed in London, England, and it was Cross that done it. So we got that personal issue in common, losing a loved one to the same killer. I’d like to express my sympathies to D’Shonn, shake his hand, maybe give him a bear hug so he knows we’re tight too.’

‘You know that won’t be possible,’ Weiss pointed out. ‘The state of Texas no longer allows Death Row prisoners to have any form of physical contact with anyone. The best he can do is pay his respects to your body, when you are gone.’