Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

This car was theirs, not rented like the Bentley. It was an older model, but impressive enough to fit their cover. Gates would see them arrive, so it wouldn’t be prudent to show up in a rustbucket.

He veered round the outskirts of the mall and aimed for the same laneway.

Slater hung up the phone and stared out the windshield.

‘We’re on,’ he said. ‘But I take it you already figured that out.’

King said, ‘This first part will be tense.’

‘You don’t say?’

Slater seemed genuinely stressed, and King couldn’t tell whether it was part of the act or not. King had a lump of tension in his throat, and he didn’t blame himself — if they were simply going in there to raze the club to the ground, they’d be more certain. They’d be in a war state of mind. But Elsa was still unaccounted for, and the labyrinth of Gates and Ray and Kerr was still unsolved, so the best choice of action was to turn at least two of the parties on each other. That’d draw all the hired gangsters and thugs and killers out of the woodwork, which would make it easier to clean up the whole mess in one fell swoop.

Until then…

King pulled into the laneway. In daylight it was even grimier. Trash everywhere, dumpsters overflowing with everything the restaurants in the mall discarded on a daily basis. The care applied to cleanliness in the massive establishments on the Strip was non-existent here.

‘Remember,’ King said, ‘we’re outraged.’

‘We sure are,’ Slater said.

He was sweating.

King screeched the BMW to a halt only feet from the back door to Wan’s. It was a furious arrival, completely lacking in subtlety. King threw the driver’s door open and shot out of the car in full view of the CCTV camera skewered into the bricks above the door. He went up the steps and pounded a fist on the wood, shaking the whole thing in its frame. He kept up the noisy banging as Slater got out of the passenger seat and strode up behind him.

They were dressed in their worn, ruffled clothes from the night before. The suits were creased and their shirts hung open. To make it look like they’d been up all night, stressed out of their minds.

The door flew open in their faces. Gates was there, deep bags under his wide eyes, the same Glock in his raised hand. He was flanked by two men, these ones lacking face tats. But they were still mean and big and glowing with unreleased anger. They were both white. They didn’t look any less dangerous than the Calle 18 killers from the night before. They had their own pistols — a HK and a SIG Sauer. Heavy duty gear.

A small arsenal, aimed at King and Slater’s faces.

King started, ‘Whoa! What’s this—?’

He couldn’t finish the sentence before one of the big henchmen grabbed him by the shirt and tore all the buttons away hauling him inside.

King made himself lose his footing. He couldn’t afford to look competent. He sprawled on the tiles and put his hands out to show he was unarmed, but it didn’t stop a couple of kicks raining down on his upper back. They hurt. The guy had put some weight into them.

King rolled onto his back, panting for breath, and saw Gates and the other thug step outside to snatch Slater. Slater feigned uselessness too, and let them throw him into the corridor where he came down alongside King.

King thought, Go with it.

Please, for the love of God, go with it.

We have too much riding on this.

Slater went with it.

Gates stomped on Slater’s stomach, and Slater spluttered and moaned in pain. King knew it was falsified — Slater was more familiar with pain than anyone on earth. But King followed suit, crying out when the two thugs stomped down on his arms and chest.

Gates slammed the door shut and yelled, ‘Get them up!’

King let them manhandle him. It wasn’t easy — he had to pretend he couldn’t do anything with his two hundred and twenty pound frame. He hunched his shoulders and made himself appear smaller as one of the henchmen led him down the corridor with a tight grip on the back of his collar. Halfway down, the guy came round from behind with an open-handed slap against King’s cheek. It blinded him momentarily, and his instincts screamed at him to fight back.

He didn’t.

The thug shoved him into the back room that acted as Gates’ office and pushed him down into one of the chairs. The guy trained his gun on King’s face.

King’s cheek stung from the slap, and his shoulder throbbed from the stomp.

But he wasn’t injured.

Not even close.

Gates and the other man hauled Slater in and threw him into the other chair. Then the three of them stood in a menacing line. Two guns trained on King, one on Slater.

Gates said, ‘You’ve got some fucking nerve coming back here.’

‘Do we?!’ King shouted.

Mock outrage.

It made Gates hesitate.

Panting hard, Slater said, ‘What is this? Huh? Why are you doing this to us?’

Gates walked right up to him and put the barrel against his forehead. ‘You shut the fuck up.’

Slater shut up.

King said, ‘There’s been a misunderstanding here, man.’

‘You killed four of my guys!’ Gates screamed, a vein throbbing on his temple. ‘Four! And then you have the nerve to come back. What, you thought you could finish the job? Think again.’

‘We’re not armed!’ King yelled. ‘For God’s sakes, what do you think we were planning? To do it with our bare hands?’

That stopped Gates in his tracks.

King flooded his eyes with as much confusion as he could muster, and beside him he sensed Slater doing the same.

Gates backed off, the Glock still raised.

But he wasn’t livid anymore.

He said, ‘What exactly is going on here?’

24

Now, King thought.

He put scorn in his eyes.

‘You’re lucky we even came back,’ he hissed. ‘I had to convince my buddy here not to flee the goddamn county. Now are you going