17
Wilson Trent stared at the phone in his hand as the line went dead. He hated cell phones. Whenever he was angry, he could always slam the receiver on a normal phone down on the base unit, but with a cell, it was hard to express how angry you were when you simply pressed a button to hang up. He settled instead for launching it across his penthouse office into the far wall. It smashed and scattered on the floor.
His two enforcers were with him. Duncan sat on one of the sofas in front of the desk. Bennett was leaning against the wall over by the door.
“Everything alright, Mr. Trent?” he asked.
Trent regarded him for a moment. He actually quite liked him, and Duncan. They’d been in his service for several years and were both very capable men. They were smart enough not to ask too many questions, and they were the epitome of loyal.
“That was that fucking bastard, Hughes!” he shouted, pointing at the remains of the phone. “Two of our cops found him and he took them out…”
He let his words trail off as his anger superseded his ability to form coherent sentences.
“You want us to go after him?” asked Duncan, standing up, almost to attention.
Trent shook his head. “No, but I want you to ask around, find out who this guy thinks he is.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“He said he’s here to kill me, and that he’s not the person I think he is. So I wanna be ready for when he comes at me.”
“You got nothin’ to worry about, Mr. Trent,” said Bennett, walking over to join his partner. “He’s one guy, and you took out his family already… He’s desperate. What can he possibly do to you?”
Trent pointed a finger at him. “Complacency is the mother of all fuck-ups,” he said. “Find out who he is and why he’s so goddamn confident.”
He picked up a copy of Adrian’s picture off his desk and threw it at Duncan, who picked it up off the floor and quickly showed it to Bennett. They studied it together for a moment, and then looked up at Trent.
“Leave it with us, Mr. Trent,” said Duncan. “We’ll find the bastard.”
They turned and left, leaving Trent alone in his office. He turned and stood looking out the window at the thunderstorm currently battering down on the city.
His city.
He wasn’t afraid of the threats Hughes had made. Not by a long shot. But he wasn’t stupid, either. There was an old saying: forewarned is forearmed. He wanted to make sure for his own piece of mind that he was fully prepared for him when he attacked. And he firmly believed that he would attack. It would be a futile attempt, of course, but he was clearly a desperate man, like Duncan had said — consumed by some glorified revenge mission. And desperate men can be capable of immense things.
Wilson Trent was a very intelligent man, and had gotten to where he was by making smart decisions and executing his strategies with ruthless efficiency. He’d already put the word out to the cops in the city on his payroll, and in the morning he’d broadcast his message statewide. Every dealer, pimp, muscle, cop and politician in Pennsylvania would have a picture of Adrian fucking Hughes, with notice that Trent wanted him — alive, preferably, but it wasn’t essential — and that there was a substantial reward for whoever found him.
There was a knock on his door, which interrupted his train of thought.
“What?” he shouted, without looking.
The door opened, and Bennett walked in.
“Mr. Trent?” he said.
“Thought you’d gone for the night?” he asked, finally turning round.
“I had, but I figured you’d wanna hear this right away.”
“Hear what?”
“I showed the picture you gave me to the men still in the building. I gave them a description and said to put the word out to their contacts in the city to be on the lookout for Adrian Hughes.”
“What do you want, a medal?” said Trent, impatiently.
Bennett took a breath, holding it for a moment. “Well, one of them said they know a guy who does a bit of work now and then in the killing business. Not a shooter, just a broker for information. Anyway, he rang him there and then and gave the description, and his contact told him he knew exactly who we were looking for and that we should cut our losses and, I quote, not fuck with the guy.”
Trent frowned as he approached something akin to concern for the first time in a long time. It seemed strange to him that a low-level no-mark who gave information to hitmen would know exactly who he was looking for. It was certainly one helluva coincidence.
“How had this guy heard of him?” he asked.
“Mr. Trent, everyone has heard of him. When I heard his name, even I had, though mostly hearsay. He’s a fucking ghost story, Boss.”
Trent slammed his hands on his desk with frustration. “For fuck’s sake, would you grow a pair? Who is he?”
Bennett swallowed hard, almost afraid to say it out loud, for reasons he hadn’t quite figured out himself. “He’s Adrian Hell.”
The words lingered for a moment in the silence, but Trent simply shrugged — the impact lost on him. “Never heard of him.”
“He’s the best there is,” continued Bennett. “He’s legendary. Some people even say you can’t kill him.”
Trent looked borderline disgusted. “Don’t be fucking moronic! I’ll kill him with my own fucking hands if I have to. He’s a nobody — just a rank amateur who ran away from a fight after I tore his world apart. You say he’s the best? Find me a professional killer who disagrees and bring them to me. I’ll pay them whatever they need to take him out, if that’s what it’s gonna take.”
Bennett looked at him for a moment and nodded. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Trent.”
He left the room without another word. Trent turned back to the window and looked out, his view of the city below clouded by the rain-covered glass. He knew that somewhere out there, Adrian Hughes was planning his death.
He smiled.
“I don’t care who you think you are, you piece of shit,” he said to himself. “I’m gonna find you, and when I do, I’ll make sure your reputation gets buried as deep as you do.”
18
The rain had eased a little during our unexpectedly epic road journey, and we’d arrived in Allentown about an hour ago. We took a swift detour to dispose of the kidnapped cop we had in the back — we left him in the doorway of a shop on a quiet street, without his phone or wallet or badge… That should keep him entertained for a while.
As advised, we headed straight for The Carrington and checked in as guests of Jimmy Manhattan’s. A porter showed us to our rooms, which were as exquisite — if not more so — than our suites at The Hilton back in Pittsburgh. Josh went straight to his room and crashed, tired after the long drive.
I grabbed a shower and changed my clothes, and I’m now lying on the bed flicking through the available channels on the TV.
My room’s a modest size, but the decor and furnishing is flawless. In addition to the large flat screen TV mounted on the wall facing the bed, there’s a nice, dark wooden desk and chair in the corner against the far wall, to the right of the window. A standing lamp is to the left. The door to the bathroom is just inside the room on the left, and the facilities are lavish. The shower was powerful and it felt great after so long on the road to stand under clean, hot water for fifteen minutes.
I’m not in the mood for sleeping — I’ve past the point where I feel tired, and after the run-in with the cops and the phone call with Trent earlier in the evening, my mind’s racing to piece together everything I want to do in order to take him down. It’s the first time I’ve operated without a contract, without a justifiable purpose given to me by a paying customer, as Josh had put it. I’m feeling an uneasy sense of freedom to everything at the moment, and I’m finding it difficult not to run with the situation and lose control. I’m more conscious of it happening now, after the conversation with Josh yesterday. We need to do this right, and I have to treat it like any other job. Research, preparation, and impeccable execution.