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
